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THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE

VOL. I

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4
London Edinbui^h Glasgow New York
Toronto Melbourne Capetown Bombay
Calcutta Madras
HUMPHREY MILFORD

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE
BY/E.KjCHAMBERS. VOL. I

OXFORD: AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

First published 1923

Reprinted photographically in Great Britain
at the University Press, Oxford, 1945. with corrections

To N. C.

PREFACE

In 1903 I explained the origin of The Mediaeval Stage
out of prehminary investigations for a little book on Shake-
speare. That little book is still unwritten, and perhaps it
was only a mirage, since working days have their term, and
all that I can now offer, after an interval of twenty years,
is another instalment of prolegomena. It has been in hand,
more or less, throughout that period, which now ends
felicitously with the tercentenary of the First Folio, But
it has often been laid aside for other literary diversions, and
still more often through the preoccupations of a life mainly
concerned with activities remote from letters. As a result,

I have constantly had to take accoimt of new material
furnished by the research or the speculations of others ;
and I only hope that in the process of revision I have
succeeded in achieving a reasonable completeness of state-
ment and a reasonable consistency in the conclusions of
chapters drafted at very different dates.

Much in these volumes is of course mere archaeology, but
the historian may find some interest in the development of
the stage as an institution, and in the social and economic
conditions which made such a development possible. My
First Book is devoted to a description, perhaps dispropor-
tionate, of the Elizabethan Court, and of the ramifications
in pageant and progress, tilt and mask, of that instinct for
spectacular mimesis, which the Renaissance inherited from
the Middle Ages, and of which the drama is itself the most
important mmifestation . The Second Book gives an account
of the settlement of the players in London, of their conflict,
backed by the Court, with the tendencies of Puritanism, and
of the place which they ultimately found in the monarchical
polity. To the Third and Fourth belong the more pedestrian

aa39*i

viii

PREFACE

task of following in detail the fortunes of the individual
playing companies and the individual theatres, with such
fullness as the available records permit. The Fifth deals
with the surviving pla3rs, not ki their literary aspect, which
lies outside my plan, but as documents helping to throw
light upon the history of the institution which produced
them. I have not for the most part carried my investiga-
tions beyond the death of Shakespeare, and although I have
sometimes regretted that I did not push on to the closing
of the theatres, the decision not to do so has long been
irretrievable.

Obviously I am treading a region far more carefully
charted by predecessors than that of The Mediaeval Stage ;
but the progress of Elizabethan scholarship during recent
years has been so great as to render a fresh attempt at
a S5mthesis justifiable. I am conscious of a deeper debt
than I can express to many fellow-workers, notably to my
friends Dr. W. W. Greg and Mr. A. W. Pollard and Pro-
fessor Feuillerat of Rennes, and to a growing band of
American students, of whom I may name Professor C. W
Wallace and Mr. J. T. Murray as examples.

E. K. C.

January, 1923.

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

PAGE

Preface ......... vii

List of Authorities xv

BOOK I. THE COURT

I. Elizabeth and James i

II. The Royal Household 27

III. The Revels Office 71

IV. Pageantry ....... 106

V. The Mask . 149

VI. The Mask {continued) ..... 175

VII. The Court Play 213

BOOK II. THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

VIII. Humanism and Puritanism .... 236

IX, The Struggle of Court and City . . . 269

X. The Actor's Quality 308

XI. The Actor's Economics 348

VOLUME II

BOOK III. THE COMPANIES

XII. Introduction. The Boy Companies . . i

A. Introduction ..... 3

B. The Boy Companies —

i. Children of Paul's ..... 8

ii. Children of the Chapel and Queen's Revels . 23

iii. Children of Windsor ..... 6 t

iv. Children of the King's Revels ... 64

V. Children of Bristol ..... 68

vi. Westminster School 69

vii. Eton College ...... 73

X

CONTENTS

The Boy Companies (emi .) —

viii. Merchant Taylors School . . . .

ix. The Earl of Leicester’s Bo3rs
X. The Earl of Oxf^d’s Bo5rs

xi. Mr. Stanley’s Boys

XIII. The Adult Companies

r

i. The Court Interluders . . • .

ii. The Earl of Leicester's Men

iii. Lord Rich's Men

iv. Lord Abergavenny's Men ....
V. The Earl of Sussex's Men ....

vi. Sir Robert Lane's Men ....

vii. The Earl of Lincoln's (Lord Clinton's) Men .

viii. The Earl of Warwick's Men

ix. The Earl of Oxford's Men ....
X. The Earl of Essex's Men ....

xi. Lord Vaux's Men ....

xii. Lord Berkeley's Men ....

xiii. Queen Elizabeth's Men ....

xiv. The Earl of Arundel's Men
XV. The Earl of Hertford's Men

xvi. Mr. Evelyn's Men .....

xvii. The Earl of Derby's (Lord Strange's) Men .
xviii. The Earl of Pembroke's Men

xix. The Lord Admiral's (Lord Howard's, Earl of
Nottingham's), Prince Henry's, and Elec-
tor Palatine's Men ....
XX. The Lord Chamberlain's (Lord Hunsdon's)
and King's Men

xxi. The Earl of Worcester's and Queen Anne's

Men

xxii. The Duke of Lennox's Men

xxiii. The Duke of York's (Prince Charles's) Men .
xxiv. The Lady Elizabeth's Men

XIV. International Companies ....

i. Italian Players in England

ii. English Players in Scotland

iii. English Players on the Continent

XV. Actors •

PAGE

75

76
76

76

77
77
85

91

92
92
96

96

97
99

102

103

103

104
116

116

117

118
128

134

192

220

241

241

246

261

261

265

270

295

CONTENTS

xi

BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES

PAGE

XVI. Introduction. The Public Theatres ,

• 353

A. Introduction .

• 355

B. The Public Theatres—

• ir The Red Lion Inn ,

• 379

ii. The Bull Inn

. 380

iii. The Bell Inn

. 381

iv. The Bel Savage Inn

. 382

V. The Cross Keys Inn

• 383

vi. The Theatre .

. 383

vii. The Curtain .

. 400

viii. Newington Butts .

. 404

ix. The Rose

• 405

X. The Swan

. 411

xi. The Globe .

. 414

xii. The Fortune ...

• 435

xiii. The Boar’s Head .

• 443

xiv. The Red Bull

• 445

XV. The Hope .

. 448

xvi. Porter’s Hall

• 472

XVII. The Private Theatres .

• 475

i. The Blackfriars

• 475

ii. The Whitefriars .

• 515

XVIII. The Structure and Conduct of Theatres

. 518

VOLUME III

XIX. Staging at Court i

XX. Staging IN THE Theatres : Sixteenth Century 47
XXL Staging in the Theatres : Seventeenth

Century 103

BOOK V. PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS

XXII. The Printing of Plays i 57

XXIII. Playwrights 201

CONTENTS

XU

VOLUME IV

PAGE

XXIV. Anonymous Work .

. I

A. Plays

. I

B. Masks

• 55

C. Receptions and Entertainments * #

. 6o

APPENDICES

A. A Court Calendar ....

75

B. Court Payments ....

131

C. Documents of Criticism .

184

D. Documents of Control

259

E. Plague Records ....

• •

345

F. The Presence-Chamber at Greenwich

• •

351

G. Serlio’s Trattato sopra le Scene .

• •

353

H. The Gull's Hornbook

365

I. Restoration Testimony .

369

X. Academic Plays ....

373

L. Printed Plays ....

379

M. Lost Plays

398

N. Manuscript Plays ....

404

INDEXES

I. Plays

409

II. Persons

, ,

425

III. Places

•

, ^

445

IV. Subjects

•

.

454

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Wedding Mask of Sir Henry Unton. From
picture in National Portrait Gallery . Vol. i, frontispiece
Domus Capitularis S*‘ Pauli a Meridie Pro-
spectus. By Wenceslaus Hollar. From
Sir William Dugdale, History of St. Paul’s

Cathedral {1658) Vol. ii, frontispiece

Diagrams of the Blackfriars Theatres . Vol. ii, p. 504

Interior of the Swan Theatre. From the
drawing after Johannes de Witt in Arend
van Buchell’s commonplace-book . . Vol. ii, p. 521

Coliseus sive Theatrum. From edition of
Terence published by Lazarus Soardus
(Venice, 1497 and 1499) . . Vol. iii, frontispiece

Diagrams of Stages Vol. iii, pp. 84, 85

Design for Cockpit Theatre at Whitehall.

By Inigo Jones. From Library of Wor-
cester College, Oxford .... Vol. iv, frontispiece
The ProfUo or Section of a Stage. From
Sebastiano Serlio, Architettura (1551) . Vol. iv, p. 354

The Pianta or Groimd-Plan of a Stage (ibid.) Vol. iv, p. 357

Elevation of a Scena Comica (ibid.) . Vol. iv, p. 359

Elevation of a Scena Tragica (ibid.) . . Vol. iv, p. 361

Elevation of a Scena Satyrica (ibid.) . . Vol. iv, p. 362

NOTE ON SYMBOLS

I HAVE found it convenient, especially in Appendix A, to use the
symbol <, following a date, to indicate an uncertain date not earlier
than that named, and the symbol >, followed by a date, to indicate
an uncertain date not later than that named. Thus 1903 <> 23
would indicate the composition date of any part of this book. I have
sometimes placed the date of a play in italics, where it was desirable
to indicate the date of production rather than publication.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

[General Bibliographical Note. The few books here named are mainly
those whose range is sufficiently wide to cover the greater part of my
own ground. Others, more limited in their scope, are reserved for
mention in the preliminary notes to the chapters upon whose subject-
matter they directly bear ; and in particular the bibliography of the
drama, as distinct from the stage, receives full treatment in Book V.
The scanty Restoration notices of the pre-Restoration stage are to be
found in R. Flecknoe, A Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664),
the anonymous Historia Histrionica (1699) ascribed to James Wright,
and J. Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (1708). W. R. Chetwood’s General
History of the Stage (1749) is of no value, and its honesty is suspect.
The first scholar to attempt a systematic history was E. Malone, in
his Account of our Ancient Theatres (1790) and Historical Account of the
Rise and Progress of the English Stage (1790), of which a revised version,
with much fresh matter, was included by J. Boswell in the Third
Variorum Shakespeare (1821). Something was added by G. Chalmers
in the Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage which
forms part of his Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare-Papers
(1797), and in an enlarged shape of his Supplemental Apology (1799).
The first edition of J. P. Collier’s History of English Dramatic Poetry
and Annals of the Stage appeared in 1831. Thereafter Collier made
many further contributions to the subject, in the publications of the
Shakespeare Society, and in his New Facts regarding the Life of Shake-
speare (1835), Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare
(1836), and Farther Particulars regarding Shakespeare and his Works
(1839). These abound in forgeiies, of which some are analysed in C. M.
Ingleby,i 4 Complete View of theShakspere Controversy {1^61), and which
have not all been excluded from the current edition of the (1879).

Some new ground was broken by F. G. Fleay, who gave real stimulus to
investigation by the series of hasty generalizations and unstable hypo-
theses contained in his On the Actor Lists, 1578-1642 {R, H. Soc. Trans, ix.
44)> On the History of Theatres in Lofidon, 1576-1642 {R. H. Soc. Trans.
X. 114), Shakespeare MantuU{iS76, 1^7%), Introduction to Shakespearian
Study (1877), Work of Shakespeare (1886), Chronicle History of

the London Stage (1890), and Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama

xvi LIST OF AUTHORITIES

(1891). Little is added to or corrected in Fleay by H. Maas^ Aussere
Geschichte der engUschen TheaUrtruppen (1907). Some useful docu-
ments were brought together by W. C. Hazlitt, The English Drama
and Stage under the Tudor and sHUart Princes (1869). An interesting
account from the French point of view is given of the earlier part of
the period by J. J. Jusserand, Le Thidtre en Angleterre depuis la
Conquete jusqu'aux pridicesseurs immSdiats de Shakespeare (1878,
1881). R. A. Small^ The Stage-quarrel between Ben Jonson and the
So-called Poetasters (1899), G. P. Baker, The Development of
Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907), are also valuable studies. light
is thrown upon stage-history by other specialist books about Shake-
speare, particularly J. 0 . Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of
Shakespeare (1881, 1890), and S. Lee, Life of William Shakespeare
(1898, 1915, 1922). In recent years fresh material has been brought
together by various researchers, notably by J. T. Murray in English
Dramatic Companies (1910) and by C. W. Wallace in The Children of
the Chapel at Blackfriars (1908), The Evolution of the English Drama
up to Shakespeare (1912), and in a number of papers in the Nebraska
University Studies and elsewhere. The Dulwich documents originally
published by J. P. Collier in Memoirs of Edward Alleyn (1841), Alleyn
Papers (1843), and Henslowe^s Diary (1845) have been more scienti-
fically edited by W. W. Greg in Henslowe's Diary (1904-8) and Hens-
lowe Papers (1907), and the Extracts from Accounts of Revels at Court
(1842) by P. Cunningham have been superseded and supplemented
by A. Feuillerat, Documents relating to the Office of the Revels in the
Time of Queen Elizabeth (1908) and Documents relating to the Revels
ai Court in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary (1914).
The work of gathering together miscellaneous documents and studies
passed from The Shakespeare Society's Papers (1844-9) to the Trans-
actions of the New Shakspere Society (1874-92), and is now carried
on by the Collections (1907-13) of the Malone Society^ A summary
of both the older and the recent learning will be found in A. H,
Thorndike, Shakespeare^s Theater (1916), and a full account of the
theatres in J. Q. Adams, Shakespearean Playhouses (1917). Little
importance need be attached to H. B. Baker, The London Stage (1889,
1904), or to C. Hastings, The Theatre : its Development in France and
England (1901), or to R. F. Sharp, A Short History of the English
Stage (1909), or to M, Jonas, Shakespeare and the Stage (1918). But
J. Genest, Some Account of the English Stage (1832), is still valuable
on the Restoration period, of which a modem account is given in
R. W. Lowe, Thomas Betterton while W, J. Lawrence, The

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

xvii

Elizabethan Playhouse (1912, 1913)^ and A. Thaler, Shakspere to
Sheridan (1922), help to trace the connexion with Elizabethan days.
—The chief histories of the Elizabethan drama are A. W. Ward,
History of English Dramatic Litefkture to the Death of Queen Anne
(1875, 1^99)^ J- A. Symonds, Shakspere's Predecessors in the English
Drama (1884, i99p), F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama (1908), C. F. T.
Brooke, The Tudor Drama (1912). A special aspect is dealt with in
F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914), and a daughter
period in G. H. Nettleton, English Drama of the Restoration and
Eighteenth Century (1914). The drama of modem Europe generally
is treated in J. Klein, Geschichte des Dramas (1865-75), and R. Prolss,
Geschichte des neueren Dramas (1881-3), both of which are now of less
value than the comprehensive Geschichte des neueren Dramas (1893-
1916) of W. Creizenach, from which part of the English section has
been translated as The English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (1916).
Treatises on contemporary foreign stages are A. d’ Ancona, Origini
del Teatro italiano (1891), E. Rigal, Le Thidtre frang^is avant la
pSriode classique (1901), and H. A. Rennert, The Spanish Stage in
the Time of Lope de Vega (1909).— Of general histories of English
literature the most important are Hazlitt-Warton, History of English
Poetry j from the Twelfth to the close of the Sixteenth Century (1871),
H. A. Taine, History of English Literature (1890), H. Morley, English
Writers (1887-95), J. J. Jusserand, Hisioire littSraire du peuple anglais
(1894-1904), G. Korting, Grundriss der Geschichte der englischen Lit-
teratur (1910, mainly of bibliographical value), W. J. Courthope,
History of English Poetry (1895-1910), and The Cambridge History of
English Literature {igo^-i 6 ),oi which vols. v and vi are wholly devoted
to the pre-Restoration drama. The social conditions of the period
may be best st udied in Shakespeare^ s England (1916). The most valuable
bibliographical data are in W. W. Greg, A List of English Plays (1900)
and A List of Masques ^ Pageants, ^c. (1902), and in the Transcript of the
Registers of the Company of Stationers, edited by E. Arber (1875-94), for
1554-1640, and by G. E. B. Eyre(i9i3-i4) for 1640-1708. The Dictionary
of Nation al Biography is a standard work of reference. Of the periodicals
in which dissertations on the stage and drama have been published,
the most important are, in England, The Modern Language Quarterly
(1896-1902) and its successor The Modern Language Review (1905-22),
Notes and Queries (1850-1922), and The Library (1889-1922) ; in
America, Modern Philology (1903-22), Modern Language Notes (1886-
1922), The Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
(1886-1922), The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (1897-

2229.1 b

xviii LIST OF AUTHORITIES

1921), and Stiidies in Philology (1915-22); and in Germany, the
Jahrhuch der Deutschen Shdkespeare-Gesellschaft (1865-1921), Englische
Studien (1877-1922), Anglia (1878-1922), and Archiv fur das Studium
der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (1848-1922).

The following list of books is mainly intended to elucidate the
references in the foot-notes, and has no claim tp bibliographical
completeness or accuracy.]

Abstract. Truth Brought to Light and Discovered by Time. 1651.
[With Abstract of revenue and expenditure for 1617.]

Adams. A Dictionary of the Drama. By W. D. Adams. Vol. i, A-G,
1904 [all issued].

Adams. Shakespearean Playhouses. By J. Q. Adams. 1917.

Aikin, Eliz. Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth. By L. Aikin.
2 vols., 1818.

Aikin, James. Memoirs of the Court of James I. By L. Aikin. 2 vols.,
1822.

Albrecht. Das englische Kindertheater. Von A. Albrecht. 1883.
[Halle dissertation.]

Albright. The Shakespearian Stage. By V. E. Albright. 1909.
Ancona. Origin! del Teatro italiano. Per A. d' Ancona. 2nd ed,,
2 vols., 1891.

Anglia. Zeitschrift fUr englische Philologie. Vols. i~xlvi. 1878-1922.
Beiblatt zu Anglia. Mitteilungen iiber englische Sprache und Literatur.
Vols. i-xxxiii. 1891-1922.

Ankenbrand. Die Figur des Geistes im Drama der englischen Renais-
sance. Von H. Ankenbrand. 1906.

Anson. The Law and Custom of the Constitution. By W. R. Anson.
4th ed., 2 vols., 1909, 1911.

Arber. Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers,
1554-1640. Edited by E. Arber. 5 vols., 1875-94.

Archiv. Archiv fiir das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen.
Vols. i-cxliii., 1848-1922. [Known as Herrig's Archiv. In progress.]
Ashmole. The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Garter. By
E. Ashmole. 1672.

Aubrey. ‘ Brief Lives *, Chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John
Aubrey. Edited by A. Clark. 2 vols., 1898.

Aydelotte. Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds. By Frank Ayde-
lottc. 1913. [Oxford Historical and Literary Studies.]

Baker. The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist. By G. P.
Baker. 1907.

Baker* The London Stage : Its History, 1576-1888. By H. B. Baker.
2 vols., 1889 ; 2nd ed. 1 vol., 1904.

Baldwin. The King's Council in England during the Middle Ages.
By J. F. Baldwin. 1913.

Ballweg. Das klassizistische Drama zur Zeit Shakespeares. Von O.
Ballweg. 1910.

Bapst. Essai sur THistoire du Th^dtre. Par E. Bapst. 1893.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES xix

Bates-Godprey. English Drama. A Working Basis. By K. L. Bates
and L. B. Godfrey. 1896. [Wellesley College.]

Batiffol. The Century of the Renaissance. By L. Batiffol. Translated
by E. F. Buckley. 1916. ^

Bayfield. A Study of Shakespeare’s Versification. By M. A. Bay>-
field. 1920.

Beard. The ^ffice of Justice of the Peace in England in its Origin
and Development. By C. A. Beard. 1904. [Columbia Univ. Studies.]

Beaumont. L’Ambassade de France en Angleterre sous Henri IV.
Mission de Christophe de Harley, Comte de Beaumont (1602-5).

P. P. Laffleur de Kermaingant. 2 vols., 1895.

Beesly. Queen Elizabeth. By E. S. Beesly. 1892.

Berkeley MSS, Catalogue of the Muniments at Berkeley Castle. By
I. H. Jeayes. 1892.

Bssant. London in the Time of the Stuarts. By W. Besant. 1903.

Besant. London in the Time of the Tudors. By W. Besant. 1904.

Besant. London South of the Thames. By W. Besant. 1912.

Bihliographica. Bibliographica. 3 vols., 1895-7.

Bibl. Soc. The Bibliographical Society.

Bibl. Trans. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society. 15 vols.,
1893-1919. Index to vols. i-x, 1910 ; to vols. xi-xv, 1919. [Amalgamated
from 1920 with The Library (q.v.).]

Biog. Dram. Biographia Dramatica : Memoirs of Dramatic Writers and
Actors. To 1764 by D. E. Baker, continued to 1782 by I. Reed, and to
1811 by S. Jones. 3 vols. in 4, 1812.

Birch, Eliz. Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from the Year
1581 till her Death. By T. Birch, 2 vols., 1754.

Birch, Henry. The Life of Henry Prince of Wales, Eldest Son of King
James I. By T. Birch. 1760.

Birch, James. The Court and Times of James the First. Edited [from
collections of T. Birch] by the Author of ‘ Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea ‘.

2 vols., 1848.

B. L. The Belles-Lettres Series.

Boas. Shakspere and his Predecessors. By F. S. Boas. 1896.

Boas. University Drama in the Tudor Age. By F. S. Boas. 1914.

Bohun. A Full Account of the Character of Queen Elizabeth. By
E. Bohun. 1693.

Boissise. L’Ambassade de France en Angleterre sous Henri IV. Mis-
sion de Jean de Thumery, Sieur de Boissise (1596-1602). Par P. P. LaflSeur
de Kermaingant. 2 vols., 1886.

Bolte. Die Singspiele der englischen Komodianten und ihrer Nach-
folger in Deutschland, Holland, und Scandinavien. Von J. Bolte. 1893.

Bond, Lyly. The Complete Works of John Lyly. Edited by R. W.
Bond. 3 vols., 1902.

Bradley. Shakespearean Tragedy. By A. C. Bradley. 1904.

Bradley. Life of the Lady Arabella Stuart. By E. T. Bradley. 2 vols.,
1889.

Braines. Holywell Priory and the Site of the Theatre, Shoreditch.
By W. W. Braines. 1915.

XX LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Brainss. The Site of the Globe Playhouse. By W. W. Braines.
X92X.

Brakdl. Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare.
Von A, Brandi. 1898. ^

Brewer. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of
Henry VIII. Arranged and catalogued by J. S. Brewer [and afterwards
J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie]. 21 vols., 1862-1910. [Palendars of State
Papers.']

Brodmeier. Die Shakespeare-Biihne nach den alten Biihnen-Anweis-
ungen. Von C. Brodmeier. 1904.

Brooke. The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Edited by C. F. T. Brooke.
1908.

Brooke. The Tudor Drama ; a History of English National Drama
to the Retirement of Shakespeare. By C. F. T. Brooke. 1912.

Brotanbk. Die englischen Maskenspiele. Von R. Brotanek. 1902.
Bruce. Letters of Elizabeth and James VI. By J. Bruce. 1849.
[C. S. xlvi.]

Bullen, O. E. P. a Collection of Old English Plays. Edited by A. H.
Bullen. 4 vols., 1882-5.

Burgon. Life and Times of Sir T. Gresham. By J. W. Burgon. 2 vols.,
1839.

Burn. The High Commission. By J. S. Bum. 1865.

Burn. The Star Chamber. By J. S. Burn. 1870.

Cabala. Cabala, sive Scrinia Sacra : Mysteries of State and Government
in Letters of Illustrious Persons and Great Ministers of State. 1654.
3rd ed., 2 Parts, 1691.

Camden. G. Camdeni Annales Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum
Regnante Elizabetha. 1615-25. Edidit T. Heamius. 3 vols., 1717. Transl.
3rd ed. 1635.

Camden, James. Gulielmi Camdeni Annales ab Anno 1603 ad Annum
1623 [appended to Camdeni et Illustrium Virorum Epistolae, 1691].

Capsll. Notitia Dramatica ; or. Tables of Ancient Playes (from their
Beginning to the Restoration of Charles the Second) so many as have
been printed, with their Several Editions : faithfully compiled and digested
in quite new method, by E[dward] C[apell] [1783]. [Part of The School
of Shakespeare.]

Carlisle. An Inquiry into the Place and Quality of the Gentlemen
of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Chamber. By N. Carlisle.
1829.

Carey. Memoirs of Robert Cary Earl of Monmouth. Edited by G. H.
Powell. 1905.

Castelain. Ben Jonson : Thomme et Toeuvre. Par M. Castelain.
1907.

C. D. J. Coleccidn de documentos in6ditos para la histoiia de Espaiia.
Por M. Fernandez de Navarrete. 112 vols., 1842-95.

Cecil. Life of Robert Cecil, ist Earl of Salisbury. By A. Cecil. 1915.
C. H. The Cambridge History of English Literature. Edited by A. W.
Ward and A. R. Waller. 14 vols,, 1907-16.

Chalmers. An Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare-Papers.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

XXI

[By G. Chalmers.] 1797. [Includes an Account of the Rise and Pf ogress
of the English SiagCt reprinted in Variorum iii. 410.]

Chalmers, S, A, A Supplemental Ajpology for the Believers in the
Shakspeare-Papers. [By G. Chalmtrs.] 1799. [Contains an enlarged
Account of the English Stage. 1

Chamberlain. Letters written by John Chamberlain during the Reign
of Queen Elizabetti. Edited by S. Williams. 1861. [C. 5 . Ixxix.]

Chamberlayne. Angliae Notitiae, or The Present State of England.
By J. Chamberlayne. 1669, &c.

Chamberlin. The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth. By F. Cham-
berlin. 1921.

Chambers. Cyclopaedia of English Literature. New edition by D,
Patrick. 3 vols., 1901-3. W. and R. Chambers.

Chambers. A Fifteenth-Century Courtesy Book. Edited by R. W.
Chambers. 1914. [£. E. T. S. o. s. cxlviii.]

Chambers. The Mediaeval Stage. By E. K. Chambers. 2 vols.,
1903.

Chambers. Notes on the History of the Revels Office under the Tudors.
By E. K. Chambers. 1906.

Chapman. Ancient Royal Palaces in and near London. Drawn in
Lithography by T. R. Way. With Notes compiled by F. Chapman. 1902.
Charvet. S6bastien Serlio. Par L. Charvet. 1897.

Chase. The English Heroic Play. By L. N. Chase. 1903.

Chaucer Records. Life Records of Chaucer. By F. J. Furnivall and
R. E. G. Kirk. 4 Parts, 1875-1900. \Chaucer Soc. ii. 12, 14, 21, 32.]

Chet WOOD. The British Theatre. Containing the Lives of the English
Dramatic Poets ; with an Account of all their Plays. By W. R. Chetwood.
1750. 1752.

Chetwood. A General History of the Stage, from its Origin in Greece
down to the Present Time, with Memoirs of the Principal Performers.
By W. R. Chetwood. 1749.

Cheyney. a History of England, from the Defeat ot the Armada to
the Death of Elizabeth. By E. P. Cheyney. Vol. i, 1914. [In progress.]
Churchill. Richard the Third up to Shakespeare. By G. B. Churchill.
1900.

Clapham-Godfrey. Some Famous Buildings and their Story. By
A. W. Clapham and W. H. Godfrey. [1913.]

Clephan. The Tournament. Its Periods and Phases. By R. C. Cle-
phan. 1919.

Clode. The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors. By
C. M. Clode. 2 vols., i888.

Clods. Memorials of the Guild of Merchant Taylors. By C. M. Clode.
1875.

Cohn. Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries. By A. Cohn. 1865,

Cokayne. Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great
Britain, and the United Kingdom. By G. E. C[okayne]. 8 vols., 1 887-98 ;
2nd ed. by V. Gibbs, 1910-21. [In progress.]

Collier, 'the History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Timfe of

xxii

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Shakespeare : and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration. By J. P.
Collier. 3 vols., 1831 ; new ed. [cited], 3 vols., 1879.

CoLUBR, M. A. Memoirs of Edward Alleyn. By J. P. Collier. 1841.
\Shalusp$af 6 Society. ] 1

CoLUBR, A. P. Alleyn Papers : Original Documents illustrative of the
Life of Edward Alleyn, and of the Early Stage. By J. P. Collier. 1843.
IShakespeare Society,] *

CoLUBR, N. P. New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare. By
J. P. Collier. 1835.

Collier, N, P, New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare.
By J. P. Collier. 1836.

CoLUBR, F, P. Farther Particulars regarding Shakespeare and his
Works. By J. P. Collier. 1839.

Collier, lUustr, Illustrations of Old English Literature. By J. P.
Collier. 3 vols., 1866.

Columbia Sh, Studies, Shaksperian Studies by the Members of the
Department of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia Univer-
sity. Edited by B. Matthews and A. H. Thorndike. 1916.

CouRTHOPE. A History of English Poetry. By W. J. Courthope,
6 vols., 1895-1910.

Cowling. Music on the Shakespearian Stage. By G. H. Cowling. 191 3.
Crawford. Collectanea. By C. Crawford. 2 Series, 1906-7.
Crawford, E, P, England's Parnassus. Compiled by R[obert] A[llot].
1600. Edited by C. Crawford. 1913.

Creighton. A History of Epidemics in Britain. By C. Creighton.
2 vols., 1891-4.

Creighton. Queen Elizabeth. By M. Creighton. 1896, 1899, &c.
Creizenach. Schauspiele der englischen KomOdianten. Von W. Crei-
zenach. 1889.

Creizenach. Geschichte des neueren Dramas. Von W. Creizenach.
Vols. i, 1893 (2nd ed. 1911); ii, 1901; iii, 1903; iv, 1909; v, 1916.
[Cited by vol. and page.]

Creizenach. The English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Trans-
lated from Band iv of Geschichte des neueren Dramas of W. Creizenach.
1916. [Cited by page.]

Cripps-Day. The History of the Tournament in England and in France.
By F. H. Cripps-Day. 1918.

C, S. Camden Society^ now incorporated with Royal Historical Society.
Cunliffe. The Influence of Seneca in Elizabethan Tragedy. An Essay
by J. W. Cunlifle. 1893. [Manchester dissertation.]

Cunningham. Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court, in
the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James. By P. Cunningham.
1842. {Shakespeare Society.]

Cushman. The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature
before Shakespeare. By L. W. Cushman. 1900.

Dasent. Acts of the Privy Council of England. New Series, by J. R.
Dasent. 32 vols., 1890-1907.

Davies. The Baronial Opposition to Edward II. By J. C. Davies.
1918.*

LIST OF AUTHORITIES xxiii

Davis. Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum. By H. W. C. Davis.
Vol. i, 1913*

Davison. The Life of William Davison. By N. H. Nicolas. 1823.

Dee. The Private Diary of Johf Dee. By J. O. Halliwell. 1842.
[C. S. xix.]

DEkker. The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. Edited by
A. B. Grosart. 5 ^ols., 1884-6. \IIuth Library.]

Dekker, G. H. B. The Gull's Hornbook. By T. Dekker. Edited by
R. B. McKerrow. 1904. [Ktng^s Library.]

Devereux. Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Ear)s of Essex, 1540-
1646. By W. B. Devereux. 2 vols., 1853.

Dicey. A. V. Dicey. The Privy Council. 1 887.

DiGOES. The Compleat Ambassador. By Sir D. Digges. 1655.
Ditchfield. The England of Shakespeare. By P. H. Ditchfield. 1917.

D. N. B. Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by L. Stephen
and S. Lee. Re-issue, with Supplement, 22 vols., 1908-9. Second Supple-
ment, Index, and Epitome, 1913.

Dodsley. A Select Collection of Old Plays. 12 vols., 1744. Published
by Robert Dodsley (Dodsley^). Second Edition by I. Reed. 12 vols.,
1780 (Dodsley^). New Edition [by J. P. Collier]. 112 vols., 1825-7
(Dodsley*). Fourth Edition by W. C. Hazlitt. 15 vols., 1874-6 (Dodsley*).

Donne. The Life and Letters of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's. By
E, Gosse. 2 vols., 1899.

Downes. Roscius Anglicanus, or, an Historical Review of the Stage,
1660-1706. By J. Downes. 1708 ; repr. ed. J. Knight, 1886.

Drake. Shakspeare and his Times. By N. Drake. 2 vols, 1817 ;
2nd ed., I vol., 1838.

Dramatic Records. A Collection of Ancient Documents respecting the
Office of Master of the Revels. By J. O. Halliwell- Philhpps. 1870.

Duff. A Century of the English Book Trade, 1457-1557. By E. G.
Duff, 1905. [Btbl. Soc.]

Eckhardt. Die Dialekt- und Auslandertypen des alteren englischen
Dramas. Von E. Eckhardt. 1910-11. [Materialien xxvii, xxxii.]

Eckhardt. Die lustige Person im alteren englischen Drama (bis 1642).
Von E. Eckhaidt. 1902. [Palaestra xvii.]

Edwards. The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, together with his Letters.
By E. Edwards. 2 vols., i868.

E. E C. T. Early English Classical Tragedies. Edited by J. W. Cun-
liffe. 1912.

Eg. P. The Egerton Papers. A Collection of Public and Private Docu-
ments. Edited by J. P. Collier. 1840. [C. S. xii.]

E.H.R. The English Historical Review. Vols. i-xxxvii, 1886-1922.
[In progress.] Index to vols. i-xx, 1906 ; to vols. xxi-xxx, 1916.
Einstein. The Italian Renaissance in England. By L. Einstein. 1902.
Ellis. Original Letters Illustrative of English History. Edited by
H. Ellis, ist Series, 3 vols., 1824, 2nd ed. 1825 ; 2nd Series, 4 vols., 1827 ;
3rd Series, 4 vols., 1846.

Elson. Shakespeare in Music. By L. C. Elson. 1908.

E. P. /. Early Plays from the Italian. Edited by R. W. Bond. 1911.

xxiv

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

E, S. Englische Studien: Organ ftir englische Philologie. Vols. i-lvi,
1877-1922. [In progress.] General-register to vols. 1-25, 1902.

Essays and Studies, Essays and Studies by Members of the English
Association. 8 vols., 1910-22. I

Evans. English Masques. By H. A. Evans. 1897.

Eyre. A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of
Stationers, 1640-1708. Edited by G. E. B. Eyre. ,3 vols., I9i3-i4«
[Roxburghe Club,]

Fairholt. The Civic Garland. By F. W. Fairholt. 1845. [Percy
Soc. Ixi.]

Fairholt. Lord Mayors* Pageants. By F. W. Fairholt. 2 vols.,
1843-4. [Percy Soc, xxxviii, xliii.]

Fanshawe. The Practice of Exchequer Court, With its severall Offices
and Officers. By Sir T. Fanshawe. 1658.

Farmer. See S. F, T., T. F.T, -

Fellowes. English Madrigal Verse. By E. H. Fellowes. 1920.

Ferrari. La ScenograJfia. Per G. Ferrari. 1902.

Feuillerat, Eliz. Documents relating to the Office of the Revels in
the Time of Queen Elizabeth. Edited by A. Feuillerat. 1908. [Mate-
riaXien xxi.]

Feuillerat, £. and M. Documents relating to the Revels at Court
in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary. Edited by A. Feuillerat.
1914. [Maierialien xliv.]

Feuillerat, M. P. Le Bureau des Menus-Plaisirs et la Mise eu Scdtie
k la Cour d' Elizabeth. Par A. Feuillerat. 1910.

FFOULKES. Armour and Weapons. By C. ffoulkes. 1909.

Finch MSS. Report on the Manuscripts of A. G. Finch, Esq. Vol. i,
1913. [Hist. MSS.]

Finett. Finetti Philoxenis : Some Choice Observations of Sir John
Finett, Knight, and Master of the Ceremonies, . . . Touching . . . Foreign
Ambassador!) in England. 1656.

Fischer. Zur Kunstentwickelung der englischen Tragodie bis zu Shake-
speare. Von R. Fischer. 1893.

Fleay, B, C. a Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, 1559-
1642. By F. G. Fleay. 2 vols., 1891. [Generally cited by author’s name,
vol., and page only.]

Fleay, C. H. A Chronicle History of the London Stage, 1559-1642.
By F. G. Fleay. 1890. [Generally cited by author’s name and page only.]

Fleay, Manual. Shakespeare Manual. By F. G. Fleay. 1876, new
ed. 1878.

Fleay, Shakespeare. A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of
William Shakespeare. By F. G. Fleay. 1886.

Fleay. On the History of Theatres in London, 1576-1642. By F. G.
Fleay. n. d. [Extract from R. Hist. Soc. Trans, x (1882) 114.]

Fleay. Queen Elizabeth, Croydon, and the Drama. By F. G. Fleay.
[1898.]

Flechsig. Die Dekorationen der modemen Btihne in Italien. Von E.
Flechsig. 1 894.

Flecknoe. a Short Discourse of the English Stage. Appended to

LIST OF AUTHORITIES xxv

Love's Kingdom. By R. Flecknoe. 1664. [Reprinted in Hazlitt,
E. D. 5 .]

Fleta, Fleta, sen Commentarius Juris Anglicani. Edidit J. Selden.
1685. f

Fortescue. Sir John Fortescue's Governance of England. Edited by
C. Plummer. 1885.

Fournel. Les Pontemporains de Moline. Par V. Fourael. 2 vols.,
1863.

Fowell-Palmer. Censorship in England. By F. Fowell and F. Palmer.

1913-

Freeburg. Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama. By V. O. Freeburg.
1915* [Columbia Univ. Studies.]

Froude. a History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat
of the Armada. By J. A. Froude. 12 vols., 1856-70 ; new ed., 12 vols.,
1881, &c.

Furnivall. The Babees Book : Manners and Meals in the Olden Time.
Edited by F. J. Furnivall. 1868. [E. E. T. S. o. s. xxxii.]

Furnivall. Queen Elizabethes Achademy, &c. Edited by F. J. Fumi-
vall. 1869. [E. E. T. S. e. s. viii.]

Gaedertz. Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Biihne. Von K. T. Gae-
dertz. 1888.

Gardiner. History of England from the Accession of James I to the
Outbreak of the Civil War. By S. R. Gardiner. 1863-84, &c.

Gardner. Dukes and Poets at Ferrara ; Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuiies. By E. Gardner. 1904.

Gardner. The King of Court Poets ; a Study of the Work, Life, and
Times of Ludovico Ariosto. 1906.

Gawdy. Letters of Philip Gawdy, 1579-1616. Edited by I. H. Jeayes.
1906. [Roxhurghe Club.]

Gayley, R, E. C. Representative English Comedies. Edited by G. M.
Gayley. 3 vols., 1903-14.

Gee. The Elizabethan Clergy and the Settlement of Religion, 1558-64.
By H. Gee. 1898.

Genest. Some Account of the English Stage, 1660-1830. [By J.
Genest.] 10 vols., 1832.

Gildersleeve. Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama.
By V. C. Gildersleeve. 1908. [Columbia Univ. Studies in English.]
Gildon. The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets.
[By Charles Gildon.] n. d. [1698], 1699.

G. M. G[odden]. The Stage Censor. An Historical Sketch : 1544-1907.
By G. M. G. 1908.

Goedeke. Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung aus den
Quellen. Von. K. Goedeke. zte Auflage. 9 vols., 1884-1910.

Gonzalez. Apuntamientos para la historia del rey Felipe II, sus rela-
ciones con la reina Isabel de Inglaterra, 1558-76. Por T. Gonzalez. 1832.
[Memorias de la Real Academia de la Historia, vii.] See Hall.

Goodman. The Court of King James the First. By G. Goodman : to
which are added Letters illustrative of Characters in the Court. Edited
by J. S. Brewer. 2 vols., 1839.

XXVI

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

GossB. The Jacobean Poets. By £. Gosse. 1894, 1899.

Gossb. Seventeenth-Century Studies. By £. Gosse. 1883, 1897.
Gosse. A Short History of Modem English Literature. By E. Gosse.
1897 ; new ed. 1905. i

GrOSSON, P. C. Playes Confuted in Five Actions. By S. Gosson. 1582.
[See Hazlitt, E, D. 5 .]

Gosson, S. A. The Schoole of Abuse. By S. Gossqn. 1579. Edited
by E. Arber. 1868. [English Reprints.] ^

Graf. Der Miles Gloriosus im englischen Drama bis zur 2^it des
Bhrgerkrieges. Von H. Graf. 1891. [Rostock diss.]

Graves. The Court and the London Theatres during the Reign of
Elizabeth. By T. S. Graves. 1913.

Green. A Short History of the English People. By J. R. Green.
1874, &c. ; revised ed. 1888, &c. ; illustrated ed., 4 vols., 1893-4,

Green. A History of the English People. By J. R. Green. 4 vols.,
1877-80 ; * Eversley * ed., 8 vols., 1895-6.

Green. Elizabeth Electress Palatine and Queen of Bohemia. By
M. A. E. Green. Revised by S. C. Lomas. 1909.

Greene. The Life and Complete Works of Robert Greene. Edited by
A. B. Grosart. 15 vols., 188 1-6. [Huth Library.]

Greg, Pastoral. Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama: A Literary
Inquiry, with special Reference to the pre-Restoration Stage in England.
By W. W. Greg. 1906.

Greo, Plays. A List of English Plays written before 1643 printed
before 1700. By W. W. Greg. 1900. [Bibliographical Society .]

Greg, Masques. A List of Masques, Pageants, &c.. Supplementary to
a List of English Plays. By W. W. Greg. 1902. [Bibliographical Society.]
Grierson. The First Half of the Seventeenth Century. By H. J. C.
Grierson. 1906. [Periods of European Literature.]

Griffiths. Evenings with Shakespeare ; with Suggestions for the
Study of other Elizabethan Literature. By L. M. Griffiths. 1889.

Gross. A Bibliography of British Municipal History. By C. Gross.
1897. [Harvard Hist. Studies.]

Hale. Society in the Elizabethan Age. By H. Hall. 1886, 1887.
Hall. The Red Book of the Exchequer. Edited by H. Hall. 3 vols.,
1896. [Rolls Series.]

Hall. Studies in English Official Historical Documents. By H. Hall.
1908.

Hall. A Formula Book of English Official Historical Documents.
Edited by H. Hall. 2 Parts. 1908, 1909.

Hall. Documents from Simancas, relating to the Reign of Elizabeth,
1558-68. Translated from T. Gonzalez by S. Hall. 1865. See Gonzalez.

Halliwbll-Philupps. Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. By J. O.
Halliwell-Phillipps. 9th ed., 2 vols.

Halliwell-Phillipps, Diet. A Dictionary of Old English Plays in
Print or Manuscript, including Latin Plays by English Authors. By J. O.
Halliwell[-Phillipps]. i860.

Halliwbll-Philupps, Illustrations. Illustrations of the Life of Shake-
speare. By J. O. Halliwell[-Phillipps], Part I. 1874.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

XXVll

Halliwbll-Phillipps. W, W, The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom : to
which are added Illustrations of Shakespeare and the Early English Drama.
Edited by J. O. Halliwellf-Phillipps]. 1846, [Sh, Soc.]

Hannay. The Later Renaissance, f By D. Hannay. 1898. [Periods
of European Literaiure.]

Harbbn. a Dictionary of London. By H. A. Harben. 1918.
Harcourt. His/}race the Steward and the Trial of Peers. By L. W.
Vernon Harcourt. 1907.

Hardwicke Papers, Miscellaneous State Papers, 1501*1726. [Edited by
P, Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke.] 2 vols., 1 778.

Hardy. Arbella Stuart. By B. C. Hardy. 1913.

Hardy. Syllabus, in English, of Rymer’s Foedera. By Sir T. D. Hardy.
3 vols., 1869-85. [Calendars of State Papers,]

Harington. Nugae Antiquae : being a Miscellaneous Collection of
Original Papers. By Sir John Harington and Others. Selected by Henry
Harington. 1769, 1775 ; 2nd ed., 3 vols., 1779; 3rd ed., by T. Park.

2 vols., 1804.

Harrison. Harrison’s Description of England in Shakespeare’s Youth :
the 2nd and 3rd books of his Description of Britaine. By W. Harrison.
1577. Edited by F. J. Fumivall. 4 Parts, 1877-1908. [N, S. S, and

Shakespeare Library.]

Harvey. The Works of Gabriel Harvey. Edited by A. B. Grosart.

3 vols., 1884-5, [Huth Library.]

Hastings. The Theatre : its Development in France and England.
By C. Hastings. Translated by F. A. Welby. 1901.

Hatfield MSS, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury
at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire. Parts i-xiii, 1883-1915. [Hist. MSS,
The collection is also known as the Cecil Papers.]

Hatton. Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton,
including his Correspondence, By N. H. Nicolas. 1847.

Ha WARDS. Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 1593-1609.
From the original Manuscript of John Hawarde. Edited by W. P. Bail-
don. 1894.

Haynes-Murdin. a Collection of State Papers, from Letters and
Memorials left by William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Vol. i, by S. Haynes,
1740 ; vol. ii, by W. Murdin, 1759.

Hazlitt. The Cx>llectcd Works of William Hazlitt. Edited by A. R.
Waller and A. Glover. 13 vols., 1902-6. [Vol. i has CharaUers of Shake-
spear's Plays, 1817, and vol. v Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the
Age of Elizabeth, 1 820.]

Hazlitt, E, D, S, The English Drama and Stage under the Tudor
and Stuart Princes, 1543-1664, illustrated by a series of Documents,
Treatises, and* Poems. Edited by W. C. Hazlitt. 1869. [Roxburghe
Library,]

Hazlitt, Jest-Books, Shakespeare Jest-Books. Edited by W. C. Hazlitt,
3 vols.,* 1864. Second edition (C. Mery Talys and Merry Tales and Quick
Answers only), i vol., 1881.

Hazlitt, Manual, A Manual for the Collector and Amateur of Old
English Plays. By W. C. Hazlitt. 1892.

xxviii -LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Hazlitt, S. Shakespeare's Library. Second Edition by W. C.
Hazlitt. 6 vols., 1875.

Hazlitt-Warton. History of English Poetry, from the Twelfth to the
close of the Sixteenth Century. BytT. Warton. Edited by W. C. Hazlitt.
4 vols., 1871.

Hearns. Liber Niger Scaccarii. Edited by T. Heame. 2nd ed.,

2 vols., 1774. ^

Henderson. James I and VI. By T. F. Henderson. 1904.
Hsnnessy. Novum Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense.

By G. Hennessy. 1898.

Henslowe. Henslowe's Diary, 1591-1609. Edited by J. P. Collier.
1845. [Shakespeare Society.

Henslowe. Henslowe's Diary. Edited by W. W. Greg. 2 Vols.,
1904-8. [Cited.]

Henslowe Papers. Henslowe Papers : being Documents supplementary
to Henslowe's Diary. Edited by W. W. Greg. 1907.

Hentznsr. Pauli Hentzneri J. C. Itinerarium Germaniae, Galliae,
Angliae, Italiae. 1612, 1629.

Herbert. The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert. Edited by
J. Q. Adams. 1917. [Cornell Studies in English, iii.]

Herbert. Typographical Antiquities : or an Historical Account of
Printing in Great Britain and Ireland. Begun by J. Ames. Augmented
by W. Herbert. 3 vols., 1785-90.

Herford. a Sketch of the History of the English Drama in its Social
Aspects. By C. H. Herford. 1881.

Herford. The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the
Sixteenth Century. By C. H. Herford. i886.

Herrmann. Forschungen zur deutschen Theatergeschichte des Mittel-
alters und der Renaissance. Von M. Herrmann. 1914.

Herz. Englische Schauspieler und englisches Schauspiel zur Zeit
Shakespeares in Deutschland. Von E. Herz. 1903. [T heater geschichtliche
Forschungen, xviii.]

Hewitt. Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe. By J. Hewitt.

3 vols., 1855-60.

Heywood. An Apology for Actors. By Thomas Heywood. 1612.
Reprint, 1841. [Shakespeare Society.]

Hindley. The Old Book Collector's Miscellany. By C. Hindley.
3 vols., 1871-3.

Hist. Hist. Historia Histrionica. An Historical Account of the English
Stage ; showing the Ancient Uses, Improvement, and Perfection of
Dramatic Representations, in this Nation. In a Dialogue of Plays and
Players. [By James Wright.] 1699 ; facs. repr. by Ashbe^ 1872. [Text
in Dodsley*, xv. 399, and Lang, Social England, 421 (English Garner).]
Hist. MSS. Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1870-
1916. [In progress. The earlier Reports on individual collections were
mostly issued as Appendices to General Reports ; those since about 1899
as separate publications.]

H. O. A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government
of the Royal Household. 1790. [Soc. of Antiquaries,]

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

XXIX

Holinshsd. Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. By R.
Holinshed. 1577, 1587; reprint, 6 vols., 1807-8.

Hopkinson. Essays on Shakespeare's Doubtful Plays. By A. F. Hop-
kinson. 13 parts, 1900. ^

Hornemann. Das Privy Council von England zur Zeit der Kdnigin
Elisabeth. Von C. Hornemann. 1912.

Howard. A Collection of Letters. Edited by L. Howard. 1753;
2nd ed., 2 vols., 1756.

Hulbert. Chaucer's Official Life. By J. R. Hulbert. 1912.

Hume. The Great Lord Burghley. By M. A. S. Hume. 1908.

Ingegneri. Della Poesia rappresentativa e del modo di rappresentare
le Fa vole sceniche. Per A. Ingegneri. 1598.

Ingleby. a complete View of the Shakspere Controversy concerning
the Genuineness of the Manuscript Matter published by Collier. By
C. M. Ingleby. 1861.

Ingleby, Allusion-Books. Shakspere Allusion-Books. Part I. Edited
by C. M. Ingleby. 1874. [V. S. S.]

Innes. England under the Tudors. By A. D. Innes. [1905.]

Jaggard. Shakespeare Bibliography : A Dictionary of every known
issue of the writings of our national poet and of recorded opinion thereon
in the English Language. By W. Jaggard. 1911.

Jahrhuch. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare- Gesellschaft. Vols.
i-lvii, 1865-1921. [In progress.]

Jeaffreson. Middlesex County Records. Edited by J. C. Jeaffreson.
4 vols., 1888-92. [Middlesex County Records Society ]

J. G. P, The Journal of Germanic Philology [afterwards The Journal
of English and Germanic Philology]. Vols. i-xx, 1897-1921. [In progress.]

Jonas. Shakespeare and the Stage. By M. Jonas. 1918.

Jones. Inigo Jones, a Life ; and Five Court Masques. By P. Cunning-
ham and J. P. Collier. 1848. [Sh. Soc;.]

Jupp. Historical Account of the Company of Carpenters. By E. B.
Jupp. 1848. 2nd ed. by W. W. Pocock. 1887.

Jusserand. Histoire litt^raire du peuple anglais Par J. J. Jusserand.
Des origines k la Renaissance. 1894. De la Renaissance k la Guerre
Civile. 1904. Translated as Literary History of the English People.
3 vols., 1895-1909.

Jusserand, Th. Le Th6&tre en Angleterre depuis la Conqudte jusqu'aux
pr6d6cesseurs imm6diats de Shakespeare. Par J. J. Jusserand. 1878 ;
2nd ed., 1881.

Kaulfuss-Diesch. Die Inszenierung des deutschen Dramas an der
Wende des sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhunderts. Von C. H.
Kaulfuss-Diesch. 1905.

Kelly. Royal Progresses and Visits to Leicester. By W. Kelly. 1884.

Kemps. Manuscripts preserved in the Muniment Room at Loseley
House. By A. J. Kempe. 1835.

Kervyn de Lettenhove. Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de
r Angleterre sous le r^gne de Philippe II. Par le Baron J. M. B. C. Kervyn
de Lettenhove. ii vols., 1882-1900. [Commission Royale d* Histoire de
Belgique.]

XXX

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Klbin. Geschichte des Dramas. Von J. Klein. 13 vols., 1865^5.
Register-Band von T. Ebner, 1886. [Vols. xii, xiii contain * Das engUsche
Drama \]

Kobppbl. Ben Jonson’s Wirkuijg anf zeitgendssische Dramatiker, und
andere Stndien zur inneren Geschichte des englischen Dramas. Von
£. Koeppel. 1906. [AngHstische Forschungen, xx.]

Kobppbl. Studien hber Shakespeare's Wirkung auf zeitgendssische
Dramatiker. Von E. Koeppel. 1905. [Materialien, ix.]

Kobppbl. Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen Novelle in der
englischen Litteratur des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. Von E. Koeppel.
1892. [ 0 . F. Ixx.]

Koeppel. Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip
Massinger's und John Ford's. Von E. Koeppel. 1897. [Q. F, Ixxxii.]

Koeppel. Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson’s, John Mars-
ton's, und Beaumont's und Fletcher's. Von E. Koeppel. 1895. [AfiJw-
chener Beitr&ge, xi.]

K6RTING. Grundriss der Geschichte der englischen Litteratur von ihren
Anf&ngen bis zur Gegenwart. Von G. Kdrting. 5th ed., 1910.

La Bodbrib. Ambassades de Monsieur [A. Le Fftvre] de La Boderie
en Angleterre, 1 606-11. 5 vols., 1750.

Lacroix. Ballets ct Mascarades de Cour de Henri III k Louis XIV.
Par P, Lacroix. 6 vols., 1868-70.

Lapontaine. The King's Musick. By H. C. De Lafontaine. 1909.

Lamb. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who Lived about the
Time of Shakespeare. By Charles Lamb. 1808. Edition by I. Gollancz.
2 vols., 1893.

La Mothe. Correspondance diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de
la Mothe F6nelon. Edited by C. P. Cooper. 7 vols., 1838-75.

Lancaster. Le M^moire de Mahelot, Laurent, et d'autres d^corateurs
de I'Hdtel de Bourgogne. By H. C. Lancaster. 1920.

Lang. History of English Literature from ‘ Beowulf ' to Swinburne.
By A. Lang. 1912.

Langbaine. Momus Triumphans : or, the Plagiaries of the English
Stage ; Expos'd in a Catalogue of all the Comedies, Tragi-Comedies,
Masques, Tragedies, Opera’s, Pastorals, Interludes, &c., both Ancient and
Modem, that were ever yet Printed in English. By Gerard Langbaine.
1688.

Langbaine. An Account of the English Dramatick Poets. Or, Some
Observations and Remarks on the Lives and Writings, of all those that
have Publish'd either Comedies, Tragedies, Tragi-Comedies, Pastorals,
Masques, Interludes, Farces, or Opera's in the English Tongue. By Gerard
Langbaine. 1691.

Lang, et Litt. Histoire de la Langue et de la Littdrature fran9aises,
des origines k 1900. Publi6e sous la direction de L. Petit de Julleville.
8 vols., 1896-1900.

Larson The King's Household in England before the Norman Con-
quest. By L. M. Larson. 1904.

Law. Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber. By E. Law. 1910.

Law. Some Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries. By £. Law. 1911.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

XXXI

Law. More about Shakespeare ‘ Forgeries By E. Law. 1913.
Lawrence. The Elizabethan Playhouse and other Studies. By W. J.
Lawrence, xst and 2nd Series, 1912, 1913.

Lee. a Life of William Shakesp^re. By S. Lee. 1898 ; new cd.
1915, 1922.

Lee. Shakespeare and the Modem Stage ; with other Essays. By
S. Lee. 1906.

Lee. The FrencTi Renaissance in England. By S. Lee. 1910.
Leonard. Early History of English Poor Relief. By E. M. Leonard.
1900.

Library. The Library : a Quarterly Review of Bibliography and Library
Lore. 1st Series, 10 vols., 1889-98 ; 2nd Series. 10 vols., 1900-9 ; 3rd
Series, 10 vols., 1 91 0-19 ; 4th Series, vols. i-iii, i92o*-22. [In progress.
See Bihl. Trans.']

Lintilhac. Histoire g^n^rale du Th6lltre en France. Par E. Lintilhac.
4 vols., 1904-9. [In progress.]

Lodge. Illustrations of British History, Biography, and Manners in the
Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, and James I. By
E. Lodge. 3 vols., 1791 ; 2nd [3rd] ed., 3 vols., 1838.

Loftie. History of London. By W. J. Loftie. 2 vols., 1883.

Loseley MSS. Report on the Manuscripts of W. M. Molyneux, Esq.,
at Loseley. 1 879. [Hist. MSS. Appendix to 7th Report.]

Lowe, Bibl. A Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature.
By R. W. Lowe. 1888.

Lowe. Thomas Betterton. By R. W. Lowe. 1891.

Lowell. The Old English Dramatists. By J R. Lowell. 1892.
L.T.R. The London Topographical Record, ii vols, 1901-17 (in
progress). [London Topographical Society.]

Lysons. The Environs of London. By D. Lysons. 2nd ed., 2 vols.,
t8ii.

T. M. The Blacke Booke. 1604. [The Epistle is signed T. M. Reprint
in Bullen's Middleton, viii.]

Maas. Die Kindertruppen : ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte der engli-
schen Theatergesellschaften, 1559-1642. Von H. Maas. 1901. [Gdttingen
dissertation.]

Maas. Aussere Geschichte der englischen Theatertruppen in dem
Zeitraum von 1559 bis 1642. Von H. Maas. 1907. [Materialien, xix.]
Machyn. The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor
of London, 1550-1563. Edited by J. G. Nichols. 1848. [C. S. xlii.]
Madden. The Diary of Master William Silence : A Study of Shake-
speare and of Elizabethan Sport. By D. H. Madden. 1897; 2nd ed.
1907

Madox. The History and Antiquities of the Exchequer. By T. Madox.
2nd ed., 2 vols., 1769.

Mahblot. La Mise en sc^ne k Paris au xvii® sikcle : M^moire de
L. Mahelot et M. Laurent. Par E. Dacier. 1901. [Mimoires de la Soc.
de VHist. de Paris, xxviii.]

Malone. Account of our Ancient Theatres. By E. Malone. 1790.
Malone. Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the English

xxxir LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Stage. 1790. [Also issued with Malone's Shakespeare (1790), i. 2, and
enlarged in Variorum (1821), iii.]

Manly. Specimens of tbe.Pre-Shakespearean Drama. Edited by J. M.
Manly. 2 vols., 1897. [In progrea^.]

ManninghaM. Diary of John Manningham, 1602-3. Edited by J.
Bruce. 1868. [C. 5 . xcix.]

Mantzius. History of Theatrical Art in Ancient and Modem Times.
By K, Mantzius. Translated by L. v. Cossel. 5 vols.i 1903-9.

Marsan. La Pastorale dramatique en France k la fin du xvi® et au
commencement du xvii® sidcle. Par J. Marsan. 1905.

Marsh. Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters. By
B. Marsh. 4 vols., 1913-16

Martin. The Site of the Globe Playhouse of Shakespeare. By W,
Martin. 1910. [Extract from Surrey Archaeological Collections,]

Martin*s, The Accounts of the Churchwardens of St. Martin's in the
Fields. ByJ. V. Kitto. 1901.

Materialien, Materialien zur Kunde des Mteren englischen Dramas.
Begrundet und herausgegeben von W. Bang. Louvain. 43 vols., 1902-14.

Matthew. The Life of Sir Tobie Matthew. By A. H. Mathew and
A. Calthrop. 1907.

Matthews. The Development of the Drama. By B. Matthews. 1904.
McConaughty, The School Drama, including Palgrave's Introduction
to AcolastuS. By J. L. McConaughty. 1913.

McKerrow. Notes on Bibliographical Evidence for Literary Students.
By R. B. McKerrow. 1914. [Extract from Bibl. Soc, Trans, xii.]
McKerrow, Devices. Printers’ and Publishers’ Devices, 1455-1640.
By R. B. McKerrow. 1913. [Bibl. See.]

McKerrow, Diet. A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers, 1557-1640.
By R. B. McKerrow and others. 1910. [Bibl. Soc.]

Mediaeval Stage. See Chambers.

Melville. Memoirs of his own Life (1549-93). By Sir James Melville.
Edited by T. Thomson. 1827, [Bannatyne Club.]

M. E. D. The Meisterpieces of the English Drama Series.

Meissner. Die englischen Comoedianten zur Zeit Shakespeares in
Oesterreich. Von J. Meissner. 1884.

Mentzel. Geschichte der Schauspielkunst in Frankfurt am Main. Von
E. Mentzel. 1882.

Meres.. Palladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury. By Francis Meres. 1598.
[See Ingleby, Allusion-Books.]

Mermaid Series. The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists. 22 vols.,
1887-95.

Meyer. Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama. By E. Meyer. 1897.
Middleton MSS. Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton at
WoUatonHall. 1911. [Hist. MSS.]

Minto. Characteristics of English Poets, from Chaucer to Shirley. By
W. Minto. 1874; 2nd ed., 1885.

Mitton. Maps of Old London. By G. E. Mitton. 1908.

M. L. A. Publications of the Modem Language Association of America.
Vols. i-xxxvii, 1886-1922. [In progress.]

LIST OF AUTHORITIES xxxiii

M. L. N, Modern Language Notes. Vols. i-xxxvii, 1886-1922. [In
progress.]

M. L. Q. The Modem Language Quarterly. 6 vols., 1896-1902.

M. L. /?. The Modem Language Bteview. Vols. i-xvii, 1905-22. [In
progress.]

Monkbmbybr. Prolegomena zu einer Darstellung der englischen Volks-
btthne. Von P. Mqpkemeyer. 1905.

Montagub. History of England, 1603-60. By F. C. Montague. 1907.

Morlby. English Writers. By H. Morley. New ed., ii vols.. 1887-95.

M. P. Modem Philology : a Quarterly Journal devoted to Research
in Modem Languages and Literatures. Vols. i-xix, 1903-22. [In progress.]

Af. 5 . O. Collections. Vol. i. 1907-11 ; vol. ii, pt. 1, 1913. [Malone
Society, In progress.]

M. S. R, The Malone Society Reprints. 46 vols., 1907-21. [In pro-
gress.]

Monday. A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters.
Set forth by Anglophile Eutheo [A. Munday ?]. 1580. [S^^ Hazlitt,

E. D. S.]

Murray. English Dramatic Companies, 1558-1642. By J. T. Murray.
2 vols., 1910.

Mus. Ant. The Musical Antiquary. 4 vols., 1909-13

Nagbl. Annalen der englischen Hofmusik. Von W. Nagel. 1894.

Nares. Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Honour-
able William Cecil, Lord Burghley. By E. Nares. 3 vols., 1828-31.

Nashb. The Works of Thomas Nashe. Edited by R. B. McKerrow.
5 vols. 1904-10.

Naunton. Fragmenta Regalia. Memoirs of Elizabeth, Her Court and
Favourites. By Sir R. Naunton. 1641 ; 2nd ed. 1653 ; ed. E. Arber, 1870.

Naylor. Shakespeare and Music. By E. W. Naylor. 1896.

Neilson, C. E. D, The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists, excluding Shake-
speare. Edited by W. A. Neilson. 1911.

Nbri. La Tragedia italiana del Cinquecento. Per F. Neri. 1904.

Nettleton. English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.
By G. H. Nettleton. 1914.

Nbubnbr. Missachtete Shakespeare-Dramen. Von A. Neubner. 1907.

Neuendorff. Die englische Volksbiihne im Zeitalter Shakespeares nach
den Buhnenanweisungen. Von B. Neuendorff. 1910.

Nicholl. Some Account of the Company of Ironmongers. By J.
Nicholl. 1851 ; 2nd ed. 1866.

Nicholls. History of the English Poor Law. By G. Nicholls. 2 vols.,
1854 ; new ed. 1898.

Nichols, Elix, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Eliza*
beth. By J. Nichols. 3 vols., 1788-1807 ; 2nd ed. [usually cited], 3 vols.,
1823.

Nichols, James. The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festi-
vities of King James the First. By J. Nichols. 4 vols., 1828.

Nichols, Illustr. Illustrations of the Manners and Expences of Antient
Times in England. [By J. Nichols.] 1797.

Nichols, Pag. London Pageants. [By J. G. Nichols.] 1837.

2229- 1

C

xxxiv

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Nicolas. Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England,
1386-1542. By H. Nicolas. 7 vols., 1834-7.

Norden, Essex. Speculi Britanniae Pars. Description of Essex. By
J. Norden. Edited by H. Ellis. .’840. [O. S. ix.]

Norden, Herts. Speculi Britanniae Pars. Description of Hertfordshire.
By J. Norden. 1598. ['Reprint Preparative. 1723.]

Norden, Middlesex. Speculum Britanniae, the First Parte. Descrip-
tion of Middlesex. By J. Norden. 1593. [Reprint with Preparative to
Speculum Britanniae. 1723.]

Northbrooke. a Treatise wherein Dicing, Dauncing, Vaine Playes, or
Enterludes, are Reproved. By J. Northbrooke. Edited by J. P. Collier.
1843. [Shakespeare Society.']

N. Q. Notes and Queries : a Medium of Intercommunication for
Literary Men and General Readers. 12 Series, 1850-1922. [In progress.]
N. S. S. New Shakspere Society.

N. S. S. Trans. Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1874,
1875-6, 1877-9, 1880-6, 1887-92.

N. U. S. Nebraska University Studies. Vols. i-xiii, [i 8883-191 3.
Ogilby. Britannia : An Illustration of England and Wales by a Geo-
graphical and Historical Description of the Principal Roads thereof. By
J. Ogilby. 1675, &c.

Ordish. Early London Theatres. By T. F. Ordish. 1894.

Ordish. Shakespeare’s London. By T. F. Ordish. 1897; 2nd ed. 1904
Ott. Die italienische Novelle im englischen Drama von 1600 bis zur
Restauration. Von A. Ott. 1904.

OuLTON. History of the Theatre. By C. W. Oulton. 1796 ; 2nd ed.

1817.

Parker. Correspondence of Matthew Parker. Edited by J. Bruce and
T. T. Perowne. 1853. [Parker Soc. xlix.]

P. C. See Nicolas and Dasent.

P. C. Wales. A Calendar of the Register of the Queen’s Majesty’s
Council in the Dominion and Principality of Wales and the Marches of
the Same, 1569-91. By R. Flenley. 1916. [Cymmrodorion 5 oc.]

Peck. Desiderata Curiosa ; or, A Collection of Divers Scarce and
Curious Pieces relating chiefly to Matters of English History. By F. Peck.
2 vols., 1732, 1735 ; 2nd ed., 2 vols., 1779.

Pegge. Curialia : or an Historical Account of the Royal Household.
By S. Pegge. 2 vols., 1791-1806.

Pegge. Curialia miscellanea. By S. Pegge. Edited by J. Nichols.

1818.

Pepys MSS. Report on the Pepys Manuscripts at Magdalene College,
Cambridge. 1911. [Hw^. M 55 .]

Percy. The Privy Council under the Tudors. By E. Percy, 1907.
Philip II. Correspondencia de Felipe II con sus embaj adores en Ingla-
terra, 1558-84. 5 vols. [Coleccidn de documentos iniditos para la historia
de Espafla, Ixxxvii, Ixxxix-xcii.]

Phillips. Theatrum Poetarum, or a Compleat Collection of the Poets,
especially the most Eminent of all Ages. By Edward Phillips. 1675.
Plomer. a Short History of English Printing. By H. R. Plomer. 1900.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

XXXV

Plombr, Did. A Dictionary of Booksellers and Printers, 1641-67. By
H. R. Plomer. 1907. [Bibl. Soc.}

Plubcmbr. Elizabethan Oxford : Reprints of Rare Tracts. By C.
Plummer. 1887. [Oxford Hist, Soc. ^eii.]

PoBL. Shakespeare in the Theatre. By W. Poel. 1915.

PoBL. Some Notes on Shakespeare's Stage and Plays. By W. Poel.
1916. [Extract frqp Bulletin of the John Ry lands Library.]

Pollard. History of England. 1547-1603. By A. F. Pollard. 1910.
Pollard. F. and Q. Shakespeare Folios and Quartos : a Study in the
Bibliography of Shakespeare's Plays, 1594-1685. By A. W. Pollard.
1909-

Pollard. Sh. F. Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates and the Problems
of the Transmission of hia Text. By A. W. Pollard. 1917 (cited), 1920.

Prod. Bibliography of Royal Proclamations, 1485-1714 ; with Historic
cal Essay by R. Steele. 2 vols., 1910-11. [Bibliotheca Lindesiana, v. vi.]
Pr6lsS. Geschichte des neueren Dramas. Von R. Pr61ss. 3 vols.,
1881-3.

PRdLSS. Von den altesten Drucken der Dramen Shakespeares. Von
R. PrOlss. 1905.

PRUNikRBS. Le Ballet de Cour en France avant Benserade et Lully.
Par H. Prunidres. 1914.

Q. F. Quellen und Forschungen zvu* Sprach- und Culturgeschichte der
germanischen Vdlker. Herausgegeben von B. ten Brink, E. Martin,
£. Schmidt. [Separate monographs.]

Rait. Royal Palaces of England. Edited by R. S. Rait. 1911.

Rasi. I Comici italiani ; Biograha, Bibliograha, Iconograha. Per L.
Rasi. 2 vols., 1897-1905.

R. d*H. L. Revue d'Histoire Litt6raire de la France. Publi^e par la
Soci6t6 d'Histoire Litt6raire de la France. 29 vols., 1894-1922. [In
progress.]

Remembrancia. Analytical Index to the Series of Records known as the
Remembrancia, preserved among the Archives of the City of London.
1579-1664. 1878.

Rbndlb. Old Southwark and its People. By W. Rendle. 1878.
Rendlb, Banhside. The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe. By
W. Rendle. 1877. [Part ii, App. i, of Harrison (q.v.).]

Rbndlb-Norman. The Inns of Old Southwark. By W. Rendle and
P. Norman. 1 888.

Rbnnbrt. The Spanish Stage in the Time of Lope de Vega. By H. A.
Rennert. 1909.

Reyhbr. Les Masques anglais. Par P. Reyher. 1909.

Reynolds. Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging. By G. F. Key-
nolds. 1905. [Extract from Modern Philology, v.]

Rhodes. The Stagery of Shakespeare. By R. C. Rhodes. 1922.

R. H. S. Trans. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Four
Series. 1873-1922. [In progress.]

Ribton-Turnbr. History of Vagrants and Vagrancy. By C. J. Ribton-
Turner. 1887.

Richardson. The Lover of Queen Elizabeth. Being the Life and

C 2

xxxvi

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Character of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1533-88. By Mrs. Aubrey
Richardson. [1907.]

Rigal. Le Theatre francais avant la periode classique. Par E. Rigal.
1901. f.

Rimbault. The Old Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal. By E. F.
Rimbault. 1872. [C. S. n. s. iii.]

Ristine. English Tragi-comedy : its Origin and pistory. By F. H.
Ristine. 1910.

Robertson. Did Shakespeare write Titus Andronicus ? By J. M.
Robertson. 1905.

Robertson. Shakespeare and Chapman. By J. M. Robertson. 1917.
Robertson. The Shakespeare Canon. By J. M. Robertson. 1922.
Rothschild. Shakespeare and his Day. A Study of the Topical
Element in Shakespeare and in the Eliza^than Drama. By J. A. de
Rothschild. 1906.

Round. The King's Serjeants and Officers of State. By J. H. Round.
1911.

Rutland MSS, The Manuscripts of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir
Castle. 4 vols., 188S-1905. [Hist, MSS. Vols. i-iii are appendices to
the 12th and 14th Reports ; vol. iv was issued separately.]

Rye. England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and
James the First. By W. B. Rye. 1865.

Rymer. Foedera, conventiones, litterae, et cujuscumque generis acta
publica inter reges Angliae et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices,
principes, vel communitates. By T. Rymer. 20 vols., 1704-35.

Sabbatini. Pratica di fabricar scene e macchine ne* teatri. Per N.
Sabbatini. 1638.

Saintsbury. History of Elizabethan Literature. By G. Saintsbury.
1887, 1890.

Saintsbury. Short History of English Literature. By G. Saintsbury.
1900, 1903.

Saintsbury. A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe*
By G. Saintsbury. 3 vols., 1900-4.

Saintsbury. The Earlier Renaissance. By G. Saintsbury. 1901.
[Periods of European Literature.]

Sadler Papers. State Papers and I-etters of Sir Ralph Sadler. Edited
by A. Clifford. 3 vols., 1809.

S. C. The Shakespeare Classics Series.

Scargill-Bird. Guide to Various Classes of Documents in the Public
Record Office. By S. R. Scargill-Bird. 3rd ed., 1908. [Calendars of
State Papers.]

Schelling. The English Chronicle Play : a Study in the Popular
Historical Literature Environing Shakespeare. By F. E. Schelling. 1902.

Schelling. Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642. By F. E. Schelling.
2 vols., 1908.

Schelling. English Literature during the Lifetime of Shakespeare.
By F. E. Schelling. 1910.

Schelling. English Drama. By F. E. Schelling. 1914. [Channels of
English Literature.]

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

XXXVll

ScHt)cKiNG. Studien iiber die stofflichen Beziehungen der englischen
Komddie zur italienischen bis Lilly. Von L. L. Schiicking. 1901.

Schwab. Das Schauspiel im ^hauspiel zur Zeit Shakespeare’s. Von
H. Schwab. 1896. •

ScoFiBLD. The Court of Star Chamber. By C. Scofield. 1900. [Chicago
dissertation.]

Scott. Elizabethan Translations from the Italian. By M. A. Scott.
1916.

Sc, P, Calendar of the State Papers relating to Scotland and Mary,
Queen of Scots, 1547-1603, in the Public Record Ofl&ce, British Museum,
and elsewhere in England. Edited by J. Bain [and later W. K. Boyd].
9 vols., 1898-1915. [In progress.]

Seccombe- Allen. The Age of Shakespeare. By T. Seccombe and
J. W. Allen. 2 vols., 1903.

Secret History. Secret History of the Court of James the First. [Edited
by Sir W. Scott.] 2 vols., 1811.

Seoar. Honor Military and Civill. By W. Segar. 1602.

Seifert. Wit- und Science- Moralit&ten. Von J. Seifert. 1892.

Serlio. II Primo [-Quinto] Libro d’Architettura. Per Sebastiano
Serlio. Venice. 1551.

S, F. T. Old English Plays, Student’s Facsimile Edition. Edited by
J. S. Farmer. 1909-14.

Sharp. A Short History of the English Stage. By R. F. Sharp. 1909.
Shaw. An Index to the Shakespeare Memorial Library. By A. C. Shaw.
3 Parts, 1900-3. [Birmingham Free Libraries.]

Shaw. The Knights of England. By W. A. Shaw. 2 vols., 1906.
Shkavyn. The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age By P.
Sheavyn. 1909. [Manchester Univ. Publ.]

Sh. Eng. Shakespeare’s England. An Account of the Life and Manners
of his Age. [By various Writers.] 2 vols., 1916.

Sh. Homage, A Book of Homage to Shakespeare. Edited by I. Gollancz,
1916.

Sheppard. The Old Royal Palace of Whitehall. By E. Sheppard. 1902.
Sh. Q. Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles. Issued under the Superinten-
dence of F. J. Furmvall. 43 vols., [i885]-9i.

Sh. Soc. The Shakespeare Society. 1841-53.

Sh. Soc. P. The Shakespeare Society's Papers. 4 vols., 1844, 1845.
1847, 1849.

Simpson. Shakespearian Punctuation. By P. Simpson. 1911.
Simpson. The School of Shakespeare. Edited by R. Simpson. 2 vols.,
1878.

Singer. Das biirgerliche Trauerspiel in England. Von H. W. Singer.
1891. [Leipzig diss.]

SiRiGATTi. La pratica di prospettiva. Per L. Sirigatti. 1 596.

Small. The Stage-Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the So-called
Poetasters. By R. A. Small. 1899.

Smith, Gregory. Elizabethan Critical Essays. Edited by G. Gregory
Smith. 2 vols., 1904.

Smith. Antiquities of Westminster. By J. T. Smith. 1807.

xxxviii LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Smith. FnAasaxt and the English Chronicle Play. By R. M. Smith.
1915-

Smith. The Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith. By J. Strype.
1698 ; 2nd ed. 1820. I

Smith. The Commedia dell* Arte ; a Study in Italian Popular Comedy-
By W. Smith. 1912. [Columbia Univ. Studies in English.]

Smyth, BerheUys. The lives of the Berkeleys, iy66-i6i8. 2 vols.

Description of the Hundred of Berkeley, i vol. By John Sm3rth of
Nibley. Edited by J. Maclean. 1883-6. [Brisiol and Gloucester Archaeo-
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Stiffkey MSS. The OiOicial Papers of Sir Nathaniel Bacon. By H. W.
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LIST OF AUTHORITIES xxxix

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xl LIST OF AUTHORITIES

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LIST OF AUTHORITIES xli

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2 vols., 1842-5. [Parker Soc. vii, xviii.]

BOOK I

THE COURT

See where she comes, lo I where,
In gaudy green arraying,

A prince of beauty rich and rare
Pretends to go a-Maying,

Triumphs of Or tana.

I.

ELIZABETH AND JAMES

[Bibliographical J^ote, — The formal history of the period is covered, with
the exception of the years 1588-1603, by J. A. Froude, History of England
from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada (1856-70), and S. R.
Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak
of the Civil War (1863-84). A beginning towards filling the gap has been
made in vol. i of E. P. Cheyney, History of England from the Defeat of the
Armada to the Death of Elizabeth (1914), in which the organization of the
court and administration is very fully treated. For specifically social
history may be added J. R. Green, History of the English People (1877-80),
an expansion of the same writer's Short History of the English People (1874),
and H. D. Traill, Social England (1893-7). Shorter surveys are A. D.
Innes, England under the Tudors (1905), A. F. Pollard, History of England,
1547-1603 (1910), G. M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts (1904),
F. C. Montague, History of England, 1603-60 (1907), all with detailed
bibliographies, of which Professor Pollard's is notably full and good.
The chief contemporary chronicles are those of Holinshed (1577), Stowe
(1580, &c.), and Camden (1615-25), while personalia and Court details are
preserved in R. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia (1641), J. Finett, Philoxenis
(1656), E. Bohnn, Character of Queen Elizabeth (1693), and the malicious
pamphlets collected by Sir W. Scott in his Secret History of the Court of
James the First (i8ii). Court life is the main theme of L. Aikin, Memoirs
of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (1818) and Memoirs of the Court of James I
(1822), and of A. Strickland, The Life of Queen Elizabeth (1840), while the
best biographical studies of the sovereigns are E. S. Beesly, Queen Elizabeth
(1892), M. Creighton, Queen Elizabeth (1896), and T. F. Henderson, James I
andiF/ (1904) • Court ceremonies are treated in J. Nichols, Progresses of Eliza-
beth (2nd ed., 1823). Contemporary England is pictured in W. Harrison,
Description of Britain (1577), and W. B, Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners
(1865), and the extracts in J. D. Wilson, Life in Shakespeare's England
(1911). The studies of social details in N. Drake, Shakespeare and his
Times (1817), and G. W. Thombury, Shakspere's England (1856), are now
superseded by the combined work of many collaborators in Shakespeare s
England (191b), where special bibliographies on numerous subjects will
be found. Shorter books of interest are H. Hall, Society in the Elizabethan
Age (1886), H. T. Stephenson, The Elizabethan People (1910), and P. H.
Ditchfield, The England of Shakespeare (1917). London may be specially
studied in C. L. Kingsford's edition (1908) of J. Stowe’s Survey of London
(1598) and in W. J. Loftie, History of London (1883), H. B. Wheatley,
London Past and Present (1891), T. F. Ordish, Shakespeare's London (1904),
W. Besant, London in the Time of the Stuarts (1903), London in the Time
of the Tudors (1904), London South of the Thames (1912), H. T. Stephenson,
Shakespeare' s London (1905), J. A. de Rothschild, Shakespeare and his
Day (1906), H. A. Harben, A Dictionary of London (1918), and the publica-
tions of the London Topographical Society ; Westminster in J. T. Smith,
Antiquities of Westminster (1807), and E. Sheppard, The Old Royal Palace
bf Whitehall (1902) ; and the royal houses generally in F. Chapman,
Ancient Royal Palaces in and near London (1902), R. S. Rait, Royal Palaces

2229-1 B

2

THE COURT

of England (1911), A. W. Clapham and W. H. Godfrey, Some Famous
Buildings and their Story (1913), and the numerous monographs cited in
the notes to the present chapter. Perhaps the most useful lx>oks of general
reference are The Dictionary of National Biography, G. E. C[okayne]'s
Complete Peerage, W. A. Shaw's Th% Knights of England, and The Victoria
History of the Counties of England.

Behind and beyond these treatises, much social and personal material
is available m prints or abstracts of official and private letters and analogous
documents. The following is not an exhaustive list of ^sources. There are
the Calendars of State Papers, of which the Domestic, Foreign, Scottish,
Spanish, and Venetian Papers are the most valuable. There are the Privy
Council minutes in J. R. Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council (1890-1907),
and those of the Welsh Council in R. Flenley’s Calendar (1916). There is,
unfortunately, no collection of the letters missive of Elizabeth. There
are full texts, by no means only of treaties, in T. Rymer's Foedera (1704-35).
Proclamations are calendared in R. Steele, Bibliography of Royal Pro-
clamations (1910-11), and London civic correspondence in Analytical Index
to the Rememhrancia (1878). There are the Reports of the Historical Manu-
scripts Commission, covering private collections, of which the Hatfield MSS.
(papers of Lord Burghley and Sir R. Cecil) are by far the most important,
while the Rutland MSS., Loseley MSS. (Sir T. Ca warden and Sir W. More),
Pepys MSS. (Earl of Leicester), Finch MSS. (Sir T. Heneage), and Middle-
ton MSS. are also useful. With these may be classed J. E. Jackson,
Longleat Papers (Wilts. Archaeological Magazine, xiv, xviii, xix), I. H.
Jeayes, Catalogue of the Muniments at Berkeley Castle (1892, George Lord
Hunsdon), and H. W, Saunders, Stiff key MSS. (1915, Sir Nathaniel Bacon).
There is a long series of collections of letters from the seventeenth century
onwards, in some of which the interest is mainly diplomatic, in others
ecclesiastical, in others again personal ; Cabala (1654, Lord Burghley),
D Digges, The Compleat Ambassador (1655, Sir F. Walsingham), E. Sawyer,
Winwood Memorials (1725), F. Peck, Desiderata Curiosa (1732), A. Collins,
Sydney Papers (1746), T. Birch, Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth (1754, Anthony
Bacon), S. Haynes and W. Murdin, A Collection of State Papers (1740-59,
Lord Burghley), L. Howard A Collection of Letters (1753), H. Hanngton,
Nugae Antiquae (1769, 1804, Sir J. Harington), Earl of Hardwicke, Miscel-
laneous State Papers (1778), E. Lodge, Illustrations of British History and
Manners (1791, 1838), A. Clifford, Sadleir Papers (1809), H. Ellis, Original
Letters Illustrative of English History (1825-46), A. J. Kempe, Loseley MSS.
(*835), T. Wright, Queen Elizabeth and her Times (1838), G. Goodman,
Court of King James I (1839), J. P. Collier, Egerton Papers (1840, Sir T.
Egerton), H. Robinson, Zurich Letters (1842-5), T. Birch, Court and Times
of James I (1848), J. Bruce, Letters of Elizabeth and James I (1849),
J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne, Correspondence of M. Parker (1853), S. Wil-
liams, Letters of John Chamberlain (1861), I. H. Jeayes, Letters of Philip
Gawdy (1906). There are biographies, in which also collections of
letters are often included ; J, Sm:^h, Lives of the Berkeleys (c. 1618),
Memoirs of Robert Carey (1577-1627), J. Strype, Sir T. Smith (1698),
T. Birch, Henry Prince of Wales (1760), N. H. Nicolas, William Davison
(1823), E. Nares, William Cecil Lord Burghley (i82&-3i), J. H. Wiffen,
The House of Russell (1833), J. W. Burgon, Sir T. Gresham (1839), N. H.
Nicolas, Sir C. Hatton (1847), B. Devereux* The Devereux, Earls of Essex
(1853), J. Spedding, Francis Bacon (1861-74), E. Edwards, Sir W. Raleigh
(1868), E. T. Bradley, Arabella Stuart (1889), B. C. Hardy, Arbella Stuart
(i 9 i 3 )» B. Gosse, John Donne (1899), L. P. Smith, Sir H. Wotton (1907),
Mrs. A. Richardson, The Lover of Queen Elizabeth (1907), A. H. Mathew

3

ELIZABETH AND JAMES

and A. Calthrop, Sir T. Matthew (igoy), C. Stahlin, Str F. Walsingham und
seine Zeit (1908), M. A. E. Green, Elizabeth Electress Palatine and Queen
of Bohemia (1909), A. Cecil, Sir R. Cecil, Earl of Salisbury (1915). The
Camden Society has published the diaries of John Dee (1842), Henry
Machyn (1848), John Manningham (1868), Sir Francis Walsingham (1870),
and Sir Roger Wilbraham (1902). Finally the ambassadorial dispatches
analysed in the calendars are supplemented, for Scotland by Sir James
Melville's Memoir^ (1S27), for the Netherlands* by J. Kervyn de Letten-
hove. Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de V Angleter re (1882-1900), for
Spain by the Correspondencia de Felipe II con sus emhaj adores en Inglaterra
(C. D. I. Ixxxvii, Ixxxix-xcii) and the Viaje de Juan Fernandez de Velasco
d Inglaterra (C. D. I. Ixxi), and for France by many publications, of which
C. P. Cooper, Correspondance diplomatique de La Mothe FSnclon (1838-75),
the Mimoires (1850) of the Due de Sully, and Ambassades de M de la
Boderie en Angleterre (1750) are the richest in court detail.]

At the close of the Middle Ages, the mimetic instinct,
deep-rooted in the psychology of the folk, had reached the
third term of its social evolution. After colouring the liturgy
of the Church and the festival celebrations of the municipal
guilds, it had attached itself, in an outgrowth of minstrelsy,
to the household of the sovereign, which had now definitely
become, with the advent of the Tudors, the centre of the
intellectual and artistic life of the country. It will be mani-
fest, in the course of the present treatise, that the palace
was the point of vantage from which the stage won its way,
against the linked opposition of an alienated pulpit and an
alienated municipality, to an ultimate entrenchment of
economic independence. On the literary side the milieu of
the Court had its profound effect in helping to determine the
character of the Elizabethan play as a psychological hybrid,
in which the romance and the erudition, dear to the bower
and the library, interact at every turn with the robust popular
elements of farce and melodrama. It is worth while, there-
fore, to attempt to recover something of the atmosphere of
the Tudor Court, and to define the conditions under which
the presentation of plays formed a recurring interest in its
bustling many-coloured life.

In every court the personality of the sovereign is naturally
a dominant factor. Who shall say with what bitter discretion
learnt in the hard school of adversity, or with what burden
of secret policy for the shaping of the nation’s destiny in
critical hours, Elizabeth mounted the steps of her throne
when her summons came in 1558. Our concern, at least, is
with externalities. Elizabeth, at twenty-five, was a young
and attractive queen, with her full share of the sensuous
Tudor blood, and of her father’s early gust for colour and for
amusement, for jewels and for pageantry. ‘ Regina tota

4

THE COURT

amoribus dedita est venationibusque, aucupiis, choreis et rebus
ludicris insumens dies noctesque,’ wrote one of her own
subjects in 1563 ; and the dispatches of the Spanish and
Venetian diplomatists strike the same note.' Although these
things had their appeal for her to the end, she was perhaps
not so utterly absorbed in them, even at the beginning, as
the observers thought. Yet it was assuredly the love of
excitement and spectacle, no less than the desire to win the
heart of London, that led her to encourage by her presence
the revived folk-festivals of the citizens and the lawyers, the
morris dances and May-games by land and water, and
the Midsummer watch, which she hurried from Richmond to
behold incognita from the Earl of Pembroke’s house at
Baynard’s Castle. There was much talk of marriage for her
in these early years. Philip of Spain himself, incredible as
it now sounds, the Kings of Denmark and Sweden, the
Archdukes Charles and Ferdinand of Austria, the Duke of
Nemours, the Earl of Arran, and of her own subjects, the
Earl of Arundel, Lord Robert Dudley, Sir William Pickering,
were some of the possible consorts whose names passed
from mouth to mouth. The gaiety of Whitehall was enhanced
by the outward show of courtship, the embassies and their
trains, the gifts and compliments, the receptions and banquets.
But it soon became apparent that, from policy or from
temperament, the Queen had no serious intention of trusting
herself in marriage. Gradually the troops of suitors faded
away. Dudley alone was left, and with Dudley the Tudor
lack of reticence, which had already brought Elizabeth into
trouble as a girl, permitted familiarities wherein hostile and
interested critics soon found material for a scandal. Whether
her heart or her senses, now or at any time, were touched
cannot be said. After all, Dudley had, as time went on, to
share her favours, such as they were, with Hatton and with
Oxford, with Henes^e and with Raleigh and with Blount.
But it is to our purpose that, when the embassies were gone,
and Elizabeth became more and more involved in the web of
political intrigues, and began to lose her looks and her health,
the court which had started so brilliantly might well have
sunk into the commonplace of middle age, had it not been for
the presence of a band of high-spirited youths, bound in the
interests of their careers to maintain the traditions of official
gallantry, and above all to incur no small expense in leading
the revels for the recreation of an imperious and criticm

* Francis to Sir Thomas Chaloner (Dec. 1563) in FToude, vii. 92 ; cf.
Sp. P. i. 10, 127 ; V. P. vii. 80, 101.

ELIZABETH AND JAMES 5

mistress. For although Elizabeth loved magnificence, she
loved economy more. The repair of a ruined exchequer was
one of the primary objects and triumphs of her statecraft.
Her household, although stately, was by no means on her
father’s, or even her sister’s, scale of expenditure. The
splendours of her jewel-house and even of her wardrobe
largely owed their origin to the strenae of successive New
Years. A similar policy governed the ordering of her amuse-
ments. Her Christmas annals afford no parallels to the costly
masks, with their marvels of architectural decoration, which
had glorified the court of Henry and were to glorify that of
James. Her masks, at least those she paid for, were dances,
not pageants. The great spectacles of the reign were liturgies,
undertaken by her gallants, or by the nobles whose country
houses she visited in the course of her annual progresses.
The most famous of all, the ‘ Princely Pleasures of Kenil-
worth ’ in 1575, was at the expense of Dudley, to whom
the ancient royal castle had long been alienated. Gradually,
no doubt, the financial stringency was relaxed. Camden
notes a growing tendency to luxury about 1574 ; others trace
the change to the coming of the Duke of Alen^on in 1581.^
Elizabeth had found the way to evoke a national spirit, and
at the same time to fill her coffers, by the encouragement of
piratical enterprise, and the sumptuous entertainments pre-
pared for the welcome of Monsieur were paid for out of the
spoils brought back by Drake in the Golden Hind.^ The
Alen^on negotiations, whether seriously intended or not,
represent Elizabeth’s last dalliance with the idea of matri-
mony. They gave way to that historic pose of unapproachable
virginity, whereby an elderly Cynthia, without complete loss
of dignity, was enabled to the end to maintain a sentimental
claim upon the attentions, and the purses, of her youthful
servants. The strenuous years, which led up to the final
triumph over the Armada in 1588, spared but little room for
revels and for progresses. They left Elizabeth an old woman.
But with the removal of the strain the spirit of gaiety awoke.
The entertainments during the progresses of 1591 and 1592
hardly yield to those of 1575 in the cost and ingenuity of
their symbolical devices. Essex, the darling of these later
years, perhaps found it easier to keep the court alive with
tilts and masks, than to play his required part in the senti-
mental comedy. The love of the dance endured with Elizabeth

* Camden (tr.), 179; Bohun, 345, from R. Johnston, Htsi. rerum Brit.
(*655). 353 : Carey, 2.

* Sp. P. iii. 91.

6

THE COURT

to the verge of the grave. Her share in the Twelfth Night
revels of 1599 was reported to Spain with the sarcastic
comment that ‘ the head of the Church of England and
Ireland was to be seen in heaold age dancing three or four
gaillards \ A year or so later, she was still dancing ‘ gayement
et de belle disposition ’ at the wedding of Anne Russell, and
in April 1602 she trod two gaillards with the Ehike of Nevers.^
It was near the end of her life, too, when her desire to see
Falstaff in love inspired Shakespeare, to the regret of those
who sentimentalize over Falstaff, with the racy English farce
of The Merry Wives of Windsor. During these last years of
all, there was a touch of fever in her restless activity. She
needed much entertainment both within doors and without
in the course of 1600, and her wearied statesmen resented the
arduousness of the progress upon which she resolved on the
verge of sixty-seven. She went a-Maying at Highgate in
1601 and at Lewisham in 1602. During the next winter her
councillors provided a special series of festivities, with the
object of inducing her to spend Christmas in London, instead
of at Richmond ; and we learn that the Court * flourisht
more then ordinarie’ with plays, only a month before the
indomitable lady took to her bed, and died of no very clearly
ascertained disease, but in ‘ a settled and unremoveable
melancholy

When James came to London he adopted the traditional
splendours of the English Court, in place of the simpler style
of living to which he had been accustomed in Edinburgh.
His scale of expenditure, indeed, was from the beginning far
in excess of ‘Elizabeth’s, and landed him before long in con-
siderable embarrassment of the purse. For this there were
various reasons : the necessity of keeping up supplementary
establishments for a queen consort and an heir apparent, the
personal inclination of Anne of Denmark for ostentatious
prodigality, the crowd of hungry Scots demanding provision
for their needs; above all, no doubt, the absence of any
statesmanlike instinct for financial control. There is plenty
of evidence that the dignity and sobriety which, on the whole,
had characterized Elizabeth’s Court soon vanished under the
lax rule of her successors. But extravagance and wanton-
ness, although deplorable in themselves, are not necessarily
unfriendly to the arts. The transference of the leading
companies of players to the direct service of the royal house-
holds made it clear that the drama would occupy no less

^ Sp. P. iv. 650; Chamberlain, 99, 126; Hatfield MSS. xii. 253;
Boissise, i. 415 ; Beaumont, 21 ; G<x)dman, i. 17.

7

ELIZABETH AND JAMES

important a place in the new order of things than it had done
in the old. And in fact the yearly tale of performances at
court soon doubled and trebled that which had sufficed for
the Christmas ‘ solace * of Elizabeth. Doubtless the King had
some personal taste for the drama, though perhaps less than
other members of his family.^ He had long entertained the
English actor, Laurence Fletcher, into his service and shown
him high favour, and Jonson is our authority for the state-
ment that Shakespeare’s plays did ‘ take not only ‘ Eliza *
but * our James But his great preoccupation was the hunt,
to which he hurried on every opportunity, regardless of the
discontent of London and even of the claims of business.
Anne, on the other hand, brought up in a court which had
been one of the first to come under the influence of the
English players abroad, and wedded into a court from which
the Kirk had never succeeded in expelling the French habits
of amusement domiciled by Mary Queen of Scots, found her
chief pleasure in the spectacular arts ; and to her influence is
mainly due that great development of the Jacobean mask,
which gave such scope to the exercise of courtly pens, and
to the remarkable decorative genius of Tnigo Jones. ^ Anne’s
interest in all forms of the drama, which even led her to the
innovation of visiting a theatre, was fully shared by the royal
children, and combined in Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales,
with a passion for the knightly exercise of the tilt to prolong
into the seventeenth century the Renaissance tradition of
spectacular feats of arms. The death of this beloved prince,
to whom the thoughts of England, disillusioned of his father,
turned as the hope of the future, fell near the end of our
period. The splendour of the Court festivities reached a climax
with the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth in 1613, and
faded even before the death of Anne herself in 1619. It had
its revival under Henrietta Maria.

The Court was a movable institution, constituted by the
actual presence of the sovereign. Abundant choice both of
‘ standing houses ’ or ‘ houses of abode ’ and of country

^ Carleton to Chamberlain, Jan. 15, 1604 ( 5 . P D., Jac, /, vi. 21) ;

* The first holy dayes we had every night a pubheke play in the great
hale, at which the king was ever present, and liked or dishked as he
saw cause; but it seems he takes no extraordinary pleasure in them.
The Queen and Prince were more the players trends, for on other
nights they had them privately, and hath since taken them to theyr
protection.’

* J. A. Lester, Some Franco- Scottish Influences on the Early English
Drama in Haverford Essays (1909)

s

THE COURT

manors was available.^ The most important palaces, under
Elizabeth, were five in number, Whitehall, Hampton Court,
Greenwich, Richmond, and Windsor. All of these stood upon
the river, and all except Windsor and in part Greenwich
dated structurally from the reign of Henry VII or that of
Henry VIII, The ancient palace of Westminster, with its
royal chapel of St. Stephen and its great hall built by William
Rufus and rebuilt by Richard II, served for coronations and
for the housing of Parliament and the courts of justice. But
it was no longer used as a royal residence, and the name of
one of its principal chambers, the ‘ white hall had been
transferred to the neighbouring structure of York Place,
originally begun by Wolsey, and surrendered to Henry VIII,
a fruitless sacrifice, at the moment of the great Cardinal’s
downfall in 1530.2 This was the metropolitan palace. It
was an extensive and irregular pile, covering many acres.
Through its centre ran the highway from London to West-
minster, piercing two arched gateways, of which the northern
one was the work of Holbein. The hall and chapel, with
the royal lodgings, galleries, and privy garden, stood on the
east, and were connected with the river by a flight of privy
stairs. On the west, reached by galleries over the gateways,
were many additional lodgings, grouped round a cockpit,
a tennis-court, and a tilt-yard. At the back of these lay
St. James’s Park.® Richmond and Hampton Court, a few

miles up the river, and Greenwich, a few miles down, were
all accessible by river as well as by road, and the royal barge
lay ready in its bargehouse opposite Whitehall, off Paris
Garden on the Surrey side. Both for Court and city the
Thames was a frequented water-way. Richmond had been

‘ Scaramelii wrote to the Signory in July 1603 (V. P. x. 71) that James
had eight palaces on the Thames, of which Hampton Court was the biggest.
Each had its own furniture, which was never taken to furnish another.

I suppose the eight must be Whitehall, St. James's, Somerset House, the
Tower, Greenwich, Richmond, Hampton Court, and Windsor. Letters of
1602, when Elizabeth was at Oatlands, contemplate her return to * Rich-
mond or some other of her houses of abode ' and to ‘ a standing house ’
{Hatfield MSS, xii. 385, 448), I suppose that these were the permanently
furnished houses.

* Cheyney, i. 143, says that the Exchequer court near Westminster
Hall, the gallery of which was built or repaired in 1570, ‘ served the queen
and court not infrequently as a ball-room * ; but this is only an old tradi-
tion, for which Smith, Westminster, 54, could find no confirmation in 1807,
and for which the records of Court entertainments certainly furnish none.

* The accounts of Smith and Sheppard (cf. Bihl. Note) may be supple-
mented from W. R, Lethaby in Archaeologia, lx. 131 ; London Topo^
graphical Record, i. 38 ; ii. 23 ; vi. 23, 35 ; vii. passim. Von Wedel
(2 R, Hist, Soc, Trans, ix. 234) describes the palace in 1584.

ELIZABETH AND JAMES 9

built by Henry VII to replace the older palace of Sheen,
destroyed by fire in 1497.^ Hampton Court, also upon the
site of an earlier royal manor-house, was like Whitehall
a monument of the architectural taste of Wolsey, and like
Whitehall became part of the spoil of Henry VIII, by whom
it was completed.^ Greenwich owed its origin to Humphrey,
Duke of Gloucester, who gave it the name of ‘ Placentia ’ or
‘ Pleasaunce It had been enlarged by Henry VII and was
the birthplace and the favourite habitation of Henry VIII. ^
Windsor, on the other hand, which stood in a wide hunting
domain some score or more of miles up the river, was an
ancient fortress of the English kings. William the Conqueror
had built it ; William of Wykeham had added to it for
Edward III, who established the college of St. George within
its walls upon an older foundation of Henry I, and made it
the habitation of his chivalric Order of the Garter. Elizabeth
modified the mediaeval aspect of the castle, by adding
a library and a garden terrace.^

Some older royal residences in London had long been con-
verted to other purposes. The Tower served as a wardrobe
or storehouse and a prison, but was only occupied by the
sovereign on the eve of a coronation.® The Wardrobe on
St. Andrew’s Hill was assigned to the Master of the Wardrobe
as an office and personal lodging.® The Savoy held a hospital,
together with various sets of lodgings.’ Baynard’s Castle had
been granted to the Herberts, nominally as keepers, in 1546.®

* E. B. Chancellor, Historical Richmond (1885) ; R. Garnett, Richmond
on the Thames (1896) ; Chapman, 123 ; Survey of 1503 in Grose and Astle,
Antiquarian Repertory ; Survey of 1649 in Nichols, Ehz. ii. 4x2.

* E. Law, History of Hampton Court Palace (1885-91) ; W. H. Hutton,
Hampton Court (1897). Silva reports to Philip on 13 Oct. 1567 (Sp. P.
i. 679) that Elizabeth was then at Hampton Court for the first time since
her attack of small-pox there in 1562, after which she took a dislike to it.
It was the largest of all the palaces, ‘ with 1800 inhabitable rooms or at
least with doors that lock ' (V, P. x. 71).

^ A. G. K. L'Estrange, The Palace and the Hospital : Chronicles of
Greenwich (1886) ; Chapman, 9. The building is shown in Wyngaerde*s
drawing of c. 1543 (Mitton, I). Hentzner was told in 1598 that it was
Elizabeth’s preferred abode.

* W. H. St. J. Hope, Windsor Castle (1913) ; R. R. Tighe and J. E.
Davis, Annals of Windsor (1858) ; E. Ashmole, The Institution, Lawes and
Ceremonies of the Garter (1672) ; J. Pote, History and Antiquities of Windsor
Castle (1749) ; G. M. Hughes, Windsor Forest (1890),

® R. G^wer, The Tower of London (i 901-2) ; Clapham and Godfrey, 29.
Elizabeth was there in 1559, 1561, and 1565.

* For its mediaeval use as an occasional royal lodging, cf. N. H. Nicolas,
Wardrobe Accounts of Edw. IV, 121, 127.

’ W. J. Loftie, Memorials of the Savoy (1878) ; Chapman, 42.

® Elizabeth paid visits there in 1559, 1562, 1564, 1566, and 1575.

lO THE COURT

Crosby Hall was the abode of wealthy merchants.^ Somerset
House, the unfinished palace of the Protector on the Strand,
had been made over to Elizabeth as princess by Edward VI
in 1552. She sometimes ociupied it, in order to be near the
city, but more usually kept it available for foreign visitors
or favoured courtiers.^ For the latter purpose it was sup-
plemented by Durham House, farther westwards on the
Strand, which Henry VI 1 1 had acquired by exchange from
the see of Durham in 1536.^ Most of the ecclesiastical
buildings, which had reverted to the Crown on the dissolution
of the religious orders, such as the Blackfriars, the White-
friars, and the Charterhouse, had been alienated.^ Elizabeth

‘ Chapman, 36 ; Clapham and Godfrey, 119.

2 S. Pegge, Curialta (1806) ; R. Needham and A. Webster, Somerset
House, Past and Present (1905). Elizabeth was there in 1558, 1562, 1571,
1573. 1582, 1583, 1585, 1587, 1588, 1589, 1590, 1593, 1594, and 1599.
She gave lodgings there to Somerset's son, the Earl of Hertford, and
amongst other guests were the Duke of Holstein (1560), Cornelius de
la Noye, an alchemist (1567), the Duke of Montmorency (1572), and the
Duke of Mayenne (1600). Conferences were held there with Alen9on's
commissioners in 1581. In 1574 (Berkeley MSS. 223) the keepership was
given to Henry Lord Hunsdon, the I^rd Chamberlain, who took up his
residence there, and after his death to Lady Hunsdon. In early documents
of the reign, the name Strand House (P. C. Acts, Jan. 1563 ; Prod. 496)
or Strand Place (Prod. 497) occurs ; in the patent of Hunsdon 's predecessor
John West in 1559 (Berkeley MSS, 218) it is ‘ Somersett Place cU. Strande
House al. Somersett House '.

3 M. A. S. Hume, A Palace in the Strand in The Year after the Armada
(1896), 263 ; Nichols, James, i. 75 ; Clapham and Godfrey, 15 1 ; T. N.
Brushheld, The History of Durham House, London, in Trans, of Devon.
Assoc. XXXV. 539. Eliza^th was there in 1565 er 1566. Lodgings were
assigned to Alvaro de la Quadra, the Spanish ambassador (i559-*63), Cecilia
of Sweden, Margravine of Baden (1565), Walter, Earl of Essex (1572),
Sir Walter Raleigh {1584-1603), Sir Edward Darcy (c. 1600-3). In 1603
James turned Raleigh and Darcy out and restored the freehold to Toby
Mathew, Bishop of Durham, who retained the river front, and leased the
Gatehouse on the Strand. The lease passed to Lord Salisbury, who built
there the New Exchange or Britain's Burse in 1609.

* L. Hendriks, The London Charterhouse (1889) ; W. F. Taylor, The
Charterhouse of London (1912). The Charterhouse, after temporary use
as a storehouse for the Tents (cf. Tudor Revels, 13), was granted to Sir
Edward North, afterwards Lord North of Kirthng, in 1545 and the grant
was confirmed by Mary in 1554. Elizabeth visited him there in Nov. 1558
and July 1561. After his death in 1564 the second lord kept a house
in Charterhouse Square, which passed to the Earls of Rutland and as
Rutland House became the scene of Davenant's First Day's Entertainment
in 1656. The main building was bought in 1565 by Thomas, fourth Duke
of Norfolk, and called Howard Place. Elizabeth visited him there in
1568. On his attainder in 1572, she lodged the Portuguese ambassador
in the house, but afterwards granted it to Norfolk’s son Thomas, Lord
Howard of Walden, whom she visited there in Jan. 1603. In 1611 Thomas
Sutton bought the Charterhouse from Howard for a hospital. On the
Blackfriars and Whitefriars, cf. ch. xvii.

ELIZABETH AND JAMES ii

retained the priory of St. John in Clerkenwell, and placed
there some of the minor Household offices, including that of
the Revels.^ Somewhat retired from the press of city life
lay St. James in the Fields, builf on the site of an old leper
hospital by Henry VIII in 1532. It ranked almost as a
country house. A park, enclosed in 1537 and adorned with
the artificial watdr known as Rosamund’s Pool, separated it
from Whitehall, and on the other side of it stretched the
enclosures of Hyde and Marylebone Parks.* There were
many country houses still farther afield. Oatlands, on the
Surrey border of Windsor Forest, served for hunting.^ To
this, and to Nonsuch in Surrey, the Queen often made resort.^
Eltham, in Kent, was another hunting ground, convenient
of access from Greenwich. Visits were paid from time to
time to Havering Bower in Essex, Enfield in Middlesex,
Hatfield, where Elizabeth had lived as a princess, in Hertford-
shire, the monastic spoil of Reading Abbey in Berkshire,
Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and the ancient capital of Win-
chester in Hampshire.® But for the most part these, and
yet other royal castles and manors in more distant counties,
slept peacefully under the privileged sway of their constables
and keepers.® There were some changes at the succession of

' Clapham and Godfrey, 165 ; cf, ch. iii.

* E. Sheppard, Memorials of St. James's Palace (1894). Elizabeth was
there in 1561, 1564, 1566, 1571, 1572, 1575, 1576, 1581, 1583, 1584, 1588,
and 1593*

* V. H. Surrey, iii. 478. Elizabeth was there in 1560, 1562, 1564, 1567,
15^. 1570. 1574. 1577. 1580, 1582, 1583, 1584, 1585, 1587, 1589. 1590,
1591. I593» i 6 oo, and 1602.

* V.H. Surrey, iii. 266; Gent. Mag. viii. (1837) Clapham and Godfrey,
3. Elizabeth was there in 1559, 1563, 1565, 1567, 1574, 1580-5 (yearly),
1587. 1589. 1591, 1592. 1593. 1594. 1595. 1596, 1598, 1599, 1600. The house
was begun by Henry VIII and finished by Lord Lumley, son-in-law of
the Earl of Anindel, to whom the property was alienated in 1556. Eliza-
beth bought the house about 1590—2. ‘ Nonbuch, which of all other places
she likes best,' wrote Rowland White m 1599 (Sydney Papers, ii 120).

® For Eltham (visits in 1559, 1560, 1576, 1581, 1596, 1597, 1598, 1599,
i6oi, 1602), once an important palace, cf. J. C. Buckler, Account of Eltham
(1828), Chapman, i, Clapham and Godfrey, 47 ; for Havering (visits in
1561, 1568, 1572, 1576, 1578, 1579, 1591, 1597). Nif hols, Ehz. iii. 70,
Clapham and Godfrey, 145 ; for Hatfield (visits m 1558, 1566, 1568, 1571,
1572, 1575, 1576), V. H. Herts, iii. 92 ; for Reading (vrsits in 1568, 1570,
1572, 1574, 1576, 1592, 1601), J. B. Hurry, Reading Abbey (1901), T. J.
Pettigrew in Journal of Brit. Arch. Ass. xvi. 192 ; for Woodstock (visits
in 1566, 1572, 1574, 1575, 1592), E. Marshall, Early Hist, of Woodstock
Manor (1873). and ch. xxiii, s.v. Lee. Elizabeth was at Enfield in 1561,
1564, 1568, 1572. 1587, 1591, 1594, I 597 » and at Winchester m 1560,

1574. 1591.

* Schedules of royal houses and other possessions to which places of
profit were attached form part of the Fee Lists described in the Bihl. Note
to ch. ii. That of 1598 (H. O, 262) includes 37 castles under constables,

12

THE COURT

James. Somerset House was assigned to Queen Anne, and
a not very successful attempt was made to re-name it Queen’s
Court. This appellation was revived when the creation of
an Earl of Somerset in i 6 i 5 seemed suggestive of confusion,
and then abandoned in favour of Denmark House.^ Non-
such, Havering, and Hatfield, with many other manors, were
also assigned to Anne as part of her dowfy. Hatfield was
exchanged in 1607 with Lord Salisbury for Theobalds, to
which James rather than Anne appears to have taken a fancy,
and the transfer gave occasion for a characteristic entert?iin-
ment by Ben Jonson. Oatlands was given to Anne in 1611
and Greenwich in 1613,2 At the beginning of the reign Oat-
lands had been the royal nursery for Henry and Elizabeth,
and it continued to be Henry’s country home for some years.®
Elizabeth, however, was soon placed in the charge of Lord
Harington, first at Exton in Rutlandshire and then at
Combe Abbey in Warwickshire. When she came to Court
in 1608, a house was found for her at Kew. Both she and
Henry sometimes resided at Hampton Court and at White-

keepers, or porters, 17 other houses, ii forests, and 8 parks, together
with the Fleet prison under a warden keeper, the Baths (at Bath) under
a keeper, the Haven of the Duchy of Cornwall under a havcnor, the
Honour of Tutbury under a steward, and Paris Garden under the keepers
of Bears and Mastiffs (cf. ch. xvi, s.v. Hope) ; in all 78.

‘ Occasionally it was still used as a guesthouse. The Constable of
Castile was lodged here in 1604, the Danish ambassador in 1605, Christian
of Denmark in 1606 and 1614. Fuller, Church History, vii. 46, says that
the name Denmark House was adopted by proclamation in honour of
King Christian, but I can find no such proclamation. Arthur Wilson
(Compleat Hist. ii. 685) dates the change c. 1610, and says that the new
name ' continued her time among her people ; but it was afterwards left
out of the common calendar, like the dead Emperor's new-named month
On the other hand I find Cecil dating from ' Queens Court ' on 6 March
1605 ( 5 . P. D. xiii. 15), Chamberlain writing in Feb. 1614 of the per-
formance of Daniel's Hymen's Triumph that it was in a * little square
paved court * at * Somerset House or Queens Court, as it must now be
called' (W. W. Greg in M. L. Q. vi. 59, from Addl. MS. 4173, ff. 368,
371), and plays acted by Anne’s men * at Queenes Court ’ in 1615 (cf.
App. B). The reason suggested in the text for the second attempt to
change the name seems to me a plausible conjecture. Perhaps ' Denmark
House ' was tried at Christian’s second visit in 1614. In any case, neither
novelty permanently established itself. The first use of ‘ Denmark House '
I have noticed is in 1615 ; that of * Somerset House ' was resumed under
Charles I.

* Lodge, iii. 62 ; Birch, i. 279 ; Devon, 63, 176 ; V. P. x. 87 ; xiii. 81 ;
S. P. D., Jac. /, xxvii. 31 ; Ixv. 79, 80 ; V. H. Surrey, iii. 478 ; V. H.
Herts, iii. 447 ; Goodman, i. 174 ; J. E. Cussans, Hist, of Herts., pts. ix,
X. 209; Nichols, James ii. 127. Theobalds, in Cheshunt, had been often
visited by Elizabeth ; cf. App. A. James had already been there yearly in
1603-1606, and found it convenient for Waltham Forest.

* Green, 7 ; V. P. x. 71.

ELIZABETH AND JAMES 13

hall, where they were lodged in that part of the palace known
as the Cockpit, on the border of St. James’s Park> But
St. James’s Palace itself was reserved for the ultimate use
of Henry, and here he set up hij? establishment as Prince of
Wales in 1610 and died in 1612. Richmond and Woodstock
were given him for country houses, and at his death he was
also buying up interests in Sheen House and Kenilworth.^
For Charles Holdenby or Holmby House in Northamptonshire
was bought in 1605, and on his brother’s death he succeeded
to St. James’s.® The King was thus left with Whitehall,
Hampton Court, and Windsor as his principal palaces.
Naturally those of his wife and son remained available for
occasional visits, and the hunting facilities of Theobalds and
Woodstock were an agreeable addition to those of Hampton
Court and Windsor themselves.** But they did not suffice
for James^ who set about providing himself with hunting
quarters in various localities. The most important of these
was Royston Priory, on the borders of Cambridgeshire and
Herts., which he bought after a year’s trial in 1604 and
enlarged into a house of some pretensions.® Others were at
Newmarket, Thetford, Hinchinbrook, Ware, and Woking,
while stables were kept up at St. Albans and Reading.®
Theobalds, Royston, and Newmarket were all reached by
a private road, maintained, like the King’s Road to Hampton
Court and another to Greenwich, by James himself.’^

The arrangement of the principal rooms of a Tudor palace
can be well studied on the plan of Hampton Court.® There
is a great Hall, and at the back of it the entrance to a Great
Chamber. At Hampton Court and Richmond this appears
to have served also as a Guard or Watching Chamber, but

' Green, 8, 17 ; V. P. xii. 194 ; Pory to Sir Thomas Puckering (3 Jan.
1633) in Court and Time of Charles /, ii. 213 : ‘ In case the Queen [of
Bohemia] do come for England, I hear that her lodging appointed in court
is the Cockpit, at Whitehall, where she lay when she was a maid.' On
the Cockpit, cf. ch. vu.

• Birch, Life of Henry, 330 ; Cunningham, viii ; V. P. xii. 194, 207,
Devon 153, 164, 179 ; S. P. D,, Jac. /, viii. 104 ; Marshall, Woodstock, 174.

® Devon, 37, 80 ; V, P, xiii, 81 ; Birch, i. 41.

• James was at Richmond in 1605, 1606, 1607, and 1611, at Oatlands
in 1604, i6o6, 1607, i6o8, 1610. 1611, 1613, and 1615, and at Woodstock
in 1603, 1604, 1^3, 1610, 1612, and 1614. Some of his hunting
trophies are still preserved at Ditchley Park ; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Lee.
Theobalds, like Royston, he visited several times a year. Evidently it
was more his than Anne's. In 1607 and 1615 his departure from London
is spoken of as going ' home ’ (Birch, i. 68, 298).

• P. H, Herts, iii. 253.

• Abstract, 52.

’ T. F. Ordish in L. T. R. viii. 6. The road crossed Holbom at Kingsgate.

^ Law, Hampton Court, i. i.

THE COURT

14

at Whitehall the Guard Chamber and the Great Chamber
were distinct.^ Out of the Great Chamber opens the Presence
Chamber, and out of this again the Privy Chamber, which
gives admittance to the private apartments of the sovereign.
These included one or more Parlours or Withdrawing Cham-
bers, as well as the Bed Chamber.^ From the opposite end
of the Great Chamber runs a gallery, which passes round
two sides of a court and leads to the royal Closet, overlooking
and forming part of the Chapel. Into this gallery also opens
the Council Chamber. The Presence Chamber and the Privy
Chamber were the essential elements of the scheme, and had
to be contrived, no matter how humbly the Court was lodged.^
The Presence Chamber seems to have been open to any one
who was entitled to appear at Court at all. Access to the
Privy Chamber, on the other hand, where Elizabeth dined
and supped and sat with her ladies, was jealously reserved
for privy councillors and other favoured persons.^ At White-
hall there were also a Privy Gallery and a Privy Garden,
which counted as parts of the Privy Chamber.^ Occasionally
ambassadors or distinguished foreign visitors might have
audience there, or even in a Withdrawing Chamber.® But
ordinarily presentations were made in the Presence Chamber,
and here the crowd of courtiers waited on Sundays for the
ceremony of the Queen’s going to chapel. Paul Hentzner
has described the scene as he saw it at Greenwich in

> At the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in 1613 (Rimbault, 163) James
went * from his Privie Chamber, throughe the presence and garde chamber,
and throughe a new bankettinge house erected of purpose for to solemnenize
this feast in, and so doune a paire of stayers at the upper end therof
hard by the Courte gate, wente alonge uppon a stately scaffold to the
great chamber stayers, and throughe the greate chamber and lobby to
the clossett, doune the staiers to the Chappell ' ; cf. Pegge. i. 68. Traces
of the Great Chamber at Whitehall possibly still exist, over the building
known as Cardinal Wolsey’s cellar (L. T. R. vii. 40).

* Davison to Leicester (1586, Hardwtcke Papers, i. 302) : ‘ I found her

majesty alone, retired into her withdrawing chamber ' ; Lord Talbot to
Anon. (1587, Rutland MSS. i. 213) : * She had my wife called in to the
withdrawing chamber, where no one but the Queen, my Lord, and Secretary
Walsingham were ' ; Sussex to Burghley (1573, 2 Ellis, iii. 27) ; * The
Queen sate in the grete Closette or Parler [at Greenwich] ' ; R. Cecil to
Essex (1596, Devereux, i. 347), reporting that Sir A. Shirley was * used
with great favour, both in the privy and drawing chambers \ The * With-
drawing Chamber ' of Law's Hampton Court plan appears to be the Privy
Chamber. They were certainly distinct at Richmond in 1600, for Vereiken
was taken through the Privy Chamber for an audience in the Withdrawing
Chamber (Sydney Papers, ii. 170). 3 iv

^ H. O. 154 (1526) ; Prod. 962 (1603). * Pegge, i. 68.

• V, P, vii. 91 (1559. Montmorency) ; ix. 531 (1603, Scaramelli).

’ Cf. App. F. Von Wedel (2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans, ix, 250) describes the
ceremony at Hampton Court in 1584,

15

ELIZABETH AND JAMES

In the Presence Chamber, too, Hentzner saw the royal table
laid and the ceremony of tasting performed, before the royal
dishes were carried to a more private apartment. An ancient
custom by which the sovereign 'occasionally dined in state
in the Presence Chamber, and was served by great nobles
of the realm upon the knee, from cupboards of massy plate,
had fallen into disuse, but was revived by James.^ In the
Hall, or if more convenient in the Great Chamber, plays
were given.^ For this purpose the dimensions, in the larger
palaces, were fully adequate. The hall of Hampton Court
is 115 ft. X 40 ft., that of Windsor 108 ft. x 33 ft., that of
Eltham, locally known as King John’s Barn, 100 ft. x 36 ft.
These alone survive, but the hall of Richmond is known
to have been 100 ft. x 40 ft., and that of Whitehall 100 ft.
X 45 ft.^ But for an exceptional entertainment, such as
a great banquet or mask, more space was desirable, and
temporary structures, known as banqueting-houses, were
erected as required. The device had already been employed
by Henry VIII. A banqueting-house had been one of the
splendours at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and
two others, one of which was called the ‘ long house or
‘ disguising house ’, were decorated by Holbein for the recep-
tion of a French embassy at Greenwich in 1527.^ Edv^ard VI
also had had a banqueting-house in Hyde Park for the
reception of another French embassy in 1551.^ In the first
year of Elizabeth’s reign she used four banqueting-houses,
one for the French ambassadors at Westminster in May, two
others at Greenwich and Cobham Hall in July,® and a fourth
at Horsley in August. A later one, prepared at Whitehall
in June 1572 for the reception of the Duke of Montmorency,
required 116 workmen to decorate it at a cost of £224. It

' V. P. X. 46, 121 ; XI. 430 ; xii. 273, 547 ; Gawdy, 132 ; Birch, i. 69 ;
Sully, Mimoires, 469. Von Wedel, however, saw Elizabeth dine in state
at Greenwich in 1584 (loc. cit., 262).

* Cf. ch. vii.

* The position of the Hall at Whitehall can be fairly well identified as
extending across Horse Guards Avenue ; cf. L. T. R. vii. 41.

^ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 189 ; Reyher, 336.

® Tudor Revels, 17 ; Hatfield MSS. i. 92, from which it appears that
there was one house only, with a kitchen, and also stands in Hyde and
Marylebone Parks.

* V, P. vii. 91 ; Holinshed, 111. 1510 ; Machyn, 203 : ‘ The x day of
July was set up in Greenwich park a goodly banketting-house made with
fir powlles, and deckyd with byrche and all manner of flowers of the feld
and gardennes,' as roses, gelevors, lavender, marygolds, and all maner of
strowhyng erl^ and flowrs ' ; FeuiUerat, Eliz. 81 : ‘ Robert Truncke-
well , . . woorking . . . vppon toe modells of the Masters device for a rowfe
and a cobboorde of a bancketinge howse ’, 97, 106.

i6 THE COURT

was hung with birch and ivy, and garnished with bushels of
roses and honeysuckles from the royal gardens.^ Finally, one
even more elaborate was erected, also at Whitehall, for the
coming of Alengon’s ambas(sadors in 1581.* This, although
only constructed of fir and deal, was strong enough to stand
until 1606. James then had it pulled down and replaced by
a new one of brick and stone, which was Beady in time lor
the Christmas festivities of 1607.® This in its turn stood

> Feuillerat, Eliz. 163 : ‘ The Banketting House made at Whitehall for
thentertaynement of the seide duke did drawe the charges ensving for the
covering therof with canvasse : the decking therof with birche & ivie :
and the ffretting» and garnishing therof, with fflowers, and compartementes,
with pendentes & armes paynted & gilded for the purpose. The ffloore
therof being all strewed with rose leaves pickt & sweetned with sweete
waters &c.* The details include 145. ^d. * for flowers broughte into
the Gx:kpitt at White hall with other necessaries, viz. fflowers of all sortes
taken vp by comyssion & gathered in the feeldes while William Hunnis,
who was keeper of the gardens at Greenwich, as well as Master of the
Chapel, provided 79 bushels of roses, with pinks, honeysuckles, and privet
flowers.

* Holinshed, iii. 1315, from Harleian MS. 293, f. 217 : * A banketting
house was begun at Westminster, on the south west side of hir maiesties
palace of White hall, made in maner and forme of a long square, three
hundred thirtie and two foot in measure about ; thirtie principals made
of great masts, being fortie foot in length a peece, standing vpright ;
betweene euerie one of these masts ten foot asunder and more. The walles
of this house were closed with canuas, and painted all the outsides of the
same most artificiallie with a worke called rustike, much like to stone.
This house had two hundred ninetie and two lights of glassc. The sides
within the same house was made with ten heights of degrees for people
to stand upon : and in the top of this house was wrought most cunninglie
upon canuas, works of iuie and hoUie, with pendents made of wicker rods,
and garnished with baie, rue, and all maner of strange flowers garnished
with spangles of gold, as also beautified with hanging toseans made of
hollie and iuie, with all maner of strange fruits, as pomegranats, orenges,
pompions, cucumbers, grapes, carrets, with such other like, spangled with
gold, and most nchlie hanged. Betwixt these works of baies and iuie,
were great spaces of* canuas, which was most cunninglie painted, the
clouds with starres, the sunne and sunne beames, with diuerse other
cotes of sundrie sortes belonging to the queenes maiestie, most richlie
garnished with gold. There were of all manner of persons working on this
house, to the number of three hundred seuentie and fiue : two men had
mischances, the one brake his leg, and so did the other. This house was
made in three weekes and three daies, and was ended the eighteenth daie
of Aprill ; and cost one thousand seuen hundred fortie and foure p>ounds,
nineteene shillings and od monie; as I was crediblie informed by the
worshipfull maister Thomas Graue surueior vnto hir maiesties workes,
who serued and gaue order for the same, as appeareth by record.* Stowe,
Annales, 688, copies Holinshed ; cf. Sp, P, iii. 91. Von Wedel {2 /?. Hist,
Soc. Trans, ix. 236) saw the house in 1584, and was told that birds sang
in the bushes overhead, while entertainments were in progress. A Record
Office was constructed below the banqueting house in 1597 (Hatfield MSS,
vii. 431).

* Camden, Annahum Apparatus, 6 (c, 12 Oct. 1607), * Camera con-

17

ELIZABETH AND JAMES

until 12 January 1619, when it was destroyed by fire, and
in its place arose the stately edifice of Inigo Jones, which
still glorifies Whitehall.^ A supplementary room of more
temporary character was put up for the Princess Elizabeth’s
wedding in 1613.2

The mediaeval court had been largely an ambulatory one.
The principal feasts, at which the King wore his crown, were
generally kept in one of the great cities — Westminster, Win-
chester, Gloucester ; and for the rest of the year the house-
hold passed by short ‘ removes * from castle to castle and
manor to manor throughout the realm. For this there were
economic as well as political reasons. Many mouths had to
be fed, and it was easier and less onerous upon the country
to devour one local storehouse after another, than to organize
an effective transport from the various sources of supply to
a single capital. But with the new political stability and
the enhanced royal wealth, which followed the coming of the
Tudors, a more settled order of things prevailed. Hence-
forward the greater part of the year was spent at one or other
of the ‘ standing houses ’ within reach of the administrative
head-quarters on the Thames, and the wanderings were con-
fined to a ‘ progress ’ of one or two summer months, during
which the sovereign took the air, and hunted, and made his
presence familiar to his outlying subjects. Under Elizabeth
the year may be said to have begun in the middle of November,
when she returned to London, generally by road .from one
of the Surrey palaces through Chelsea. The event, at any
rate during the later years of the reign, almost took rank as
a ceremony of state. The Queen came by night, with the
Master of the Horse leading her palfrey by the bridle and
a great noble carrying the sword. Ambassadors were invited
to be present, and the Lord Mayor and citizens were called

vivialis de novo construitur apud Whitehall ’ ; Stowe, Annales, 688, 892,
910, ‘ the beautiful room at Whitehall ’ ; Devon, 44, 302, ‘ James Acheson
. . . hath, by our direction, formed a model for the roof of our Banqueting-
house at Whitehall ' ; V, P. xi. 86, ‘ At the close of the ceremony [mask
of Jan. 1608] he said to me that he intended this function to consecrate
the birth of the Great Hall which his predecessors had left him built
merely in wood, but which he had converted into stone But James
had been displeased with the building when he first saw it about i6 Sept.
1607 (S. P. D, xxviii. 51). Goodman, li. 176, says that the City had to
bear the cost in return for the transfer to them of Blackfriars, Whitefriars,
and other liberties (cf. ch. xvii, s.v. Blackfriars).

' Chamberlain to Carleton (Birch, ii. 124) : * One of the greatest losses
spoken of is the burning of all or most of the writings and papers belonging
to the offices of the Signet, Privy Seal, and Council Chamber, which were
under it * ; cf. Reyher, 342 ; Goodman, ii. 175, 187.

* V, P. xii. 533 ; Stowe, 916 ; Birch, i. 229 ; Finett, ii ; cf. p. 14.

2229*1

C

i8 THE COURT

upon to don their rich gowns and chains and give a torch-
light welcome.^ The date was no doubt determined, partly
by the approach of winter, .partly by that of Accession Day
or, as it was often but incorrectly called, Coronation Day,
on 17 November. This anniversary, from 1570 onwards, was
kept with a solemn celebration, which appears to have
originated spontaneously in or near Oxfol^d, to have been
adopted throughout the country, to have been revived during
the next reign as an indication of popular discontent with
James, and to have been still traceable in the form of a holiday
at the Exchequer and at the schools of Westminster and
Merchant Taylors in 1827.^ It was on this day that the
tilt-yard of Westminster blazed with the pageantry and rang
with the spears of the manhood of England, gathered under
the leadership of Sir Henry Lee to do honour to the virgin
Queen. The Earl of Essex gave the final touch of flattery
to the occasion in 1592 by appearing in his collar of SS,

‘ a thing unwonted ’, except on days of the most solemn
ceremony.® In 1588, after the Armada, Elizabeth ordered
a renewal of the tilting upon 19 November, which happened

> Stowe, 787, 789, 791 ; Von Wedel in 2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans, ix. 256 ;
P. P. Laffleur de Kermaingant, Mission de Jean de Thumery, i. 368, both
describing the procession at length ; Mission de Christophe de Harlay, 252,

‘ la coustume a tousjours est4, et mesmes du temps de la feue Royne de
tr6s heureuse memoire, que les ambassadeurs residens en Angleterre sont
priez d’accompagner les roys, lorsqu'ilz retoument en leur ville de rx>ndres,
apr^s leur progr^s ' ; Goodman, i. 164, * The Queen's constant custom was
a little before her coronation-day to come from Richmond to London,
and to dine with my lord Admiral at Chelsea, and to set out from Chelsea
at dark night, where the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen were to meet
her *. Precepts by the Lord Mayor and other records of civic expenditure
on the receptions are in Arber, i. 510 ; v. Ixxvii ; Kitto, 538 ; Young,
Barber Surgeons, 108 ; Welch, Pewter ers, ii. 33.

* Camden, 19 1, *Anno iam regni Elizabethae duodecimo feliciter exacto,
in quo aureum* ut vocarunt diem creduli Pontificii sibi ex ariolorum pre-
dictione expectabant, boni omnes per Angliam laetanter triumphabant et
xvii Novembris Anniversarium regni inchoati diem, gratiarum actionibus,
concionibus per Ecclesias, votis multiplicatis, laetisona campanarum pulsa-
tione, hastiludiis, et festiva quadam laetitia celebrare coeperunt, et in
obsequiosi amoris testimonium, dum ilia viveret, non destiterunt ' ; La
Mothe, V. 204 ; Arber, i. 561, 566, 578 ; Sydney Papers, i. 371, ' the
Triumphes of her Coronation’; Ellis, ii. hi. 160, citing Pauls Cross Sermon
of T. Holland on 17 Nov. 1599, published 1601, with a Defence of the
Church of England for keeping Queen* s Day, for the origin at Oxford under
Vice-Chancellor Cooper, which is perhaps confirmed by the records of the
tilt (cf. ch. iv). But the City churches rang their bells on the day before
1570 ; cf. Westminster, 18 (1568), * ringing for the prosperous reign of the
eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth ' ; Kitto, 248, ‘ ringing for the quene
the xvij of November 1569 ’, 269 (1572), * ringing at the quenes ma^*®*
chaunginge of her raign &c. The Chamber A ccounts for 1595-6 use the term
‘ Raigne day *. Goodman, i. 98, notes the Jacobean revival.

* Birch, Elie. i. 92.

ELIZABETH AND JAMES 19

to be St. Elizabeth’s day, but this second triumph seems to
have been only occasional.^

Christmas was ordinarily kept Whitehall ; the occasional
substitution of Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court, or
even Windsor is sometimes to be explained by the prevalence
of the plague in London, sometimes perhaps by nothing more
than a royal whim. But during the years of strain which
preceded the Armada Elizabeth appears to have shunned
Whitehall as much as possible, not merely at Christmas but
jj^t all times, probably from a sense that her personal security
"^ould be better provided for in some more compact and less
act^v 3 sible abode.^ Whether in Whitehall or elsewhere, the
twelve days of Christmas, from the Nativity to the Epiphany,
were a season of high revels. I do not find that Elizabeth,
like her father and brother, ever appointed a Lord of Misrule,
although there is some trace of an election of a King of the
Bean on the last and greatest day of all. Twelfth Night.^
But Twelfth Night itself, with St. Stephen’s, St. John’s,
Innocents’, and New Year’s Day, were regularly appointed
for plays and masks, which often overflowed on to other
nights during the period. Sometimes, too, there was another
tilt, or a barriers in the hall or banqueting-room. And on
New Year’s Day it was etiquette for the lords and ladies at
Court and many of the officers of the household to present
the Queen with the New Year gifts or strenae which had been
immemorial in European courts since the days of the Roman
Empire, while she in turn rewarded the donors with gilt plate
from the royal jewel house and distributed largess amongst
her personal attendants and other customary recipients.^

^ Sp. P. iv. 494 ; cf. Kitto, 407 : ‘ ye of November to y« Parrito'
for a warrant to kepe holy y« xix*** day At tyme he*" ma^*® should
a gone to Powles The ceremony, however, was ^deferred to 24 Nov.
There was also a tilt on 19 Nov. in 1590. Von Wedel {2 R, Hist, Soc,
Trans, ix. 236, 256) says in 1584 that this was a regular day for tilting ;
but he also says it wa^) the royal birthday, which was 7 Sept.

* I find no prolonged stay at Whitehall between May 1584 and Jan. 1589.
If her presence in London was necessary during this period Elizabeth seems
to have preferred St. James or Somerset House. She opened Parliament
in Feb. 1586 from Lambeth; there were other visits to Lambeth and
the Lord Admiral's house (Hance's) in Westminster.

* V. P. vii. 374 (6 Jan. 1566). Machyn, 273, records a visit to the
court of a lord of misrule from the city in 1561.

^ Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 238. Nichols, Ehz i. 108 ; li. 65, 249 ; iii. i,
445, prints rolls of gifts to and from the Queen for 1562. 1578, 1579, 1589,
and 1600 from manuscripts in the British Museum and in private hands.
A roll for 1585 is noticed in Arch. i. ii. Those for 1563, 1577, ^ 59 ^, and
1603 appear to be among the Miscellaneous Rolls of Chancery in the R. O.
(Scargill-Bird®, 363), but are unprinted. Nichols also pnnts shorter lists
of jewels given to the Queen for a number of years.

20

THE COURT

The revels were renewed for Candlemas (2 Feb.) and for
Shrovetide, either at the Christmas head-quarters or at some
other palace to which the Court had meanwhile removed.
Some part of the early spring was nearly always spent away
from Westminster, and during her later years Elizabeth not
infrequently left part of the household behind her and made
a short ‘ by progress ’ to the house of Lord Burghley at
Theobalds or that of Sir Thomas Gresham at Osterley or
some other favoured courtier. The rest of the spring and
summer was divided between Westminster and the river
palaces, to and from which the Queen went by land or water,
dining on the way, often at Chelsea or at the house of one
John Lacy at Putney, and breaking the long journey from
Greenwich to Richmond or Hampton Court by a night’s rest,
generally at the archiepiscopal abode of Lambeth. It was
customary to ring the church bells as she entered or left
a parish, and the entries of payments to ringers in the
accounts of churchwardens serve as a convenient clue to her
comings and goings. Easter, with the distribution of alms
and washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, and Whitsuntide
were kept as ecclesiastical, rather than secular, feasts. On
23 April, St. George’s Day, the Queen went in procession
about the Court with the Knights of the Garter and the
Chapel in their copes. This was the occasion for the choosing
of new knights, but their subsequent installation at a Garter
feast took place without the Queen at Windsor, whither they
rode in great and costly splendour.^ During the summer
there might be another tilt, and the Queen is recorded to
have kept ‘ Mayings ’ on i May and to have taken part from
time to time in other survivals of the ancient folk festivals.^
About July she started for her ‘ progress ’, which might
occupy from one to two months, according to her fancy, or
if there was to be no regular progress, departed for one of
the more sequestered houses, Windsor or Reading, Oatlands
or Nonsuch, where she delighted to spend the autumn. During
this period fell her birthday, on 7 September.®

> Machyn. 195, 232, 257, 280, 305 ; V, P. vii. 74 ; Hawarde, 74, 109 ;
Sydney Papers, ii. 44 ; cf. E. Ashmole, The Institution of the Order of the
Garter (1672) ; N. H. Nicolas, Orders of Knighthood (1841) ; G. F. Beltz,
Memorials of the Order of the Garter (1841). Henri IV was installed by
proxy in Apr. 1600, and the attendance of the Admiral's men perhaps
implies a play (Hatfield MSS. x. 118, 269 ; Henslowe, i. 120). There are
Garter allusions in Merry Wives of Windsor.

* Cf. Appendix A. The Chamber Accounts show an annual payment
for a bonfire on Midsummer Day.

® Westminster, 19 (i579)» &c., and Kitto, 364 (1584), &c., record the
ringing of London bells. It can hardly have been a day for tilting (cf.
p. 19) as the Court was usually in progress.

ELIZABETH AND JAMES 21

The Jacobean calendar underwent certain modifications,
largely determined by the King’s sporting instincts. James
kept his Court for the most pajt at Whitehall, Hampton
Court, and Windsor. After the winter of 1603, when plague
held him at Hampton Court, his Christmasses and Shrove-
tides were invariably at Whitehall, and hither he always
proceeded at the ind of October, in time for the celebration
of All Saints* Day on i November.^ On 5 November was
kept, after 1605, the anniversary of Gunpowder Plot, and
to this day, in course of time, the winter bonfires of folk
custom transferred themselves.^ The Twelve Nights, with
Candlemas and Shrovetide, remained the chief seasons for
plays and masks, but the plays were greatly increased in
number. One was often given on All Saints* Day (i Nov.)
to usher in the winter, and others were called for at intervals
during the winter months. James was also regularly at
Whitehall on his Accession Day, 24 March, which, like his
predecessor, he honoured with a tilt.^ He maintained the
tradition of the progress, generally choosing the direction of
such hunting grounds as Sherwood, Wychwood, the New
Forest, or Salisbury Plain ; and during the course of his
progress, on 5 August, he celebrated another anniversary,
that of his delivery from the Gowry conspiracy in 1600. On
this day ambassadors were expected to pursue him from
London and offer their congratulations.^ The progress
generally ended at Havering early in September.^ There-
after the household was established at Windsor or Hampton
Court until winter began again. But James’s personal life
was a far less settled one than that of Elizabeth. He disliked
London, and at all times of the year, and wherever the Court
might be, he was constantly leaving the greater part of it
behind, referring the transaction of business to the Privy
Council, and betaking himself with the Master of the Horse

* V, P. xi. 57, 59, refers to an ‘ old custom ’ of keeping All Saints' Day
in the city (i.e. Westminster] with the Knights of the Garter and the
court ; cf. Nichols, James, ii. 155. It can only have been a Jacobean
custom, for Elizabeth did not as a rule reach Westminster by i Nov.

* Cf. Mediaeval Stage^ i. 124, 248. V, P. xii. 237, notes ringing on 5 Nov.
1 61 1. Williams, Founders, 86, prints a guild order of 1611 for sermons
at Paul's Cross and dinners on * Coronation ' day, 5 Aug. and 5 Nov., as
days ' of meeting for the kings majesties sarves '.

» Cf. ch. iv.

* Camden, Annalium Apparatus, 2 (Aug. 1603), ‘ Indicitur ut hie dies
festus celebretur pb Regem k Gowriorum conjuratione liberatum ' ; cf.
Goodman, i. 3 ; Boderie, i. 283 ; V, P. xii. 26, 196, 409. The question
as to the bona lides of the plot commemorated is discussed by A. Lang,
James VI and the Cowrie Mystery (1902).

* Goodman, i. 247.

22

THE COURT

and Sir Thomas Lake, a clerk of the signet who acted as his
private secretary, to Theobalds or Royston, or some other
hunting box, at which hisiavourite pursuit might be con-
veniently enjoyed. From thence he would hurry back, often
for a day or two only, when some office of state or Court
ceremony urgently demanded his attendance. There is abun-
dant evidence that this abnormal passion for the chase had
much to do with the early unpopularity of James. It led
to neglect of business, the grave inconvenience of ministers,
excessive purveyance, and the trampling of crops ; and the
popular discontent soon found vent in libels on the stage
and elsewhere. But James said that he could not lead
a sedentary life and must study his health above all things.^

During both reigns the normal tenor of Court life was
naturally disturbed from time to time by some exceptional
event. Parliaments required to be opened in state, although
neither Sovereign was fond of summoning Parliaments.^ The
thanksgiving for the Armada on 24 November 1588 was
a notable day of triumph for Elizabeth. James did not win
battles, but he created his son Prince of Wales in 1610 and*
married his daughter in 1613 with considerable pomp. In
1607, being in need of a loan, he fluttered city life by dining
with the Lord Mayor on 12 June and the Merchant Taylors
on 16 July.® The arrival of extraordinary ambassadors or
other foreign visitors of importance necessitated frequent
provision for their entertainment. The constant relations
which Elizabeth maintained with France led to a number of
special missions, for one purpose or another, diplomatic or
complimentary, throughout the reign. The most interesting
of these, from the point of view of an annalist of Court revels,
were concerned with the negotiations, already referred to, for
a marriage with the Duke of Alengon, afterwards Duke of
Anjou and ‘ Monsieur ’ of France, the brother of Henri III.
These began in 1578 and came to a head in 1581, when
a visit by Francis de Bourbon, Dauphin de Montpensier, and
other commissioners in the spring was followed by another
by Anjou himself in November, which lasted over Christmas
to the following February. Both occasions were honoured
with sumptuous tilts and other entertainments. Before and

* 5 . P. D. xii. 13 ; V . P . x. 81, 90, 95. i 95 . \ xi. 276 ; xii. 41, 381 ;

Lodge, lii. 41, 108, no, 141 ; Sully, 455, 458 ; Boderie, i. 310 ; Winwood,
ill. 182.

* K. P. vii. 23, describes the ceremony in 1559, and Von Wedel, 2 R. HisU
Soc, Trans, ix. 260, in 1584.

» Cf. ch. iv and App. A. In 1612 the Elector Palatine attended the
banquet on Lord Mayor’s Day ; Henry’s illness kept Mm away.

23

ELIZABETH AND JAMES

after Monsieur came in 1572 Francis Duke of Montmorency
and Marshal of France, in 1601 Marshal Biron, and in 1602
the Duke of Nevers, Biron appears to have been a substitute
for his master, Henri IV, whom* Elizabeth would have wel-
comed, but who apparently could not bring himself to face
the perils of the Channel crossing. Chapman puts the com-
ment in the Queen’s mouth :

We had not thought that he whose virtues fly
So beyond wonder and the reach of thought,

Should check at eight hours’ sail, and his high spirit,

That stoops to fear less than the poles of heaven,

Should doubt an under-billow of the sea,

And, being a sea, be sparing of his streams.^

Of visitors from other lands than France may be noted
Cecilia, Margravine of Baden and sister of the King of Sweden,
in 1565) Feother Pissenopscoia, an ambassador in search of
a bride for Ivan I, Tsar of Muscovy, in 1583, and Ludovic
Verreyken, ambassador from the archiducal court of Flanders
in 1600. Visits were expected from Mary of Scots in 1562
and from James in 1590, but in fact Mary never came until
she was a fugitive or James until he was King.^ Elizabeth,
however, on her side, sent complimentary embassies for
the intended wedding of James in 1589, and the baptism
of his son Henry in 1594. The most important visitor to
James himself was the Queen’s brother, Christian, King
of Denmark, who came twice. His elaborate state visit in
July and August 1606 left several unpleasant memories
behind it. The Kings fell out over James’s indifference
to Christian’s sister. Hunting bored Christian and James
disliked being outshone by his brother-in-law in running
at the ring. Nor did the subjects more readily mix, for the
Danes thought the English haughty, and the English thought
the Danes gross ; and in particular the heavy drinking habits
of the north, although by no means uncongenial to James
personally, led to scenes which were scandalous in the eyes

* Conspiracy of Byron, iv. 25. An undated letter from Elizabeth to
Henri regrets that in spite of ‘ nostre sejour en deux lieux si proches Tun
de Tautre . . . nous sommes tous deux empeschez de passer la mer ' ; she
adds, * je me resoudray dans peu de jours de m’en retourner k Londres '
(Sully, 364; Berger de Xivrey, Lettres missives de Henri IV, v. 464).
This was doubtless written early m Sept. 1601 when Elizabeth was at
Basing and Henri at Calais. Sully, followed by Strickland, 678, has an
elaborate account of the business, including an interview between himself
and Elizabeth at Dover, but the itinerary (cf. App. A) makes it impossible
that she can have gone to Dover.

^ V, P, viii. 496 ; cf. ch. v.

24

THE COURT

of all who remembered the austerer fashions of Elizabeth.^
It was a general relief when Christian decided to abridge the
period originally set down for his stay. He came again,
briefly and informally, in I614. Other Jacobean visitors
were the Duke of Holstein, another brother of the Queen, in
1604, the Prince de Joinville in 1607, the Prince of Bruns-
wick, a nephew of the Queen, in 1610, the Due de Bouillon
in 1612, and the Elector Palatine, for his wedding with the
Princess Elizabeth, in the same year. James received con-
gratulations on his accession from ambassadors extraordinary
sent by the Emperor and the Kings of France and Spain,
as well as from other representatives of minor powers. Sub-
sequently Juan de Velasco, Constable of Castile, came as
ambassador extraordinary from Spain, with other Spanish
and Flemish commissioners, for the signing of a treaty of
peace in 1604, and had the honour of being waited upon by
Shakespeare as groom of the chamber.^

In addition to extraordinary ambassadors there were
generally also permanent or ‘ lieger ’ ambassadors in residence.
These varied in number with the shifting diplomacies of the
time. France was the foreign country most constantly repre-
sented at Elizabeth’s Court.^ There was generally also a
Scottish ambassador. Diplomatic relations with Spain were
broken off in 1584 ; ^ and there were no Italian ambassadors,

* Cf. ch. V for Harington’s description of a drunken mask at Theobalds ;
there is confirmatdry evidence in V. P, x. 386 ; Boderie, i. 241, 283, 297,

2 Cf. ch. xiii, s.v. JCing’s.

3 Gilles de Noailles, Abb6 de Lisle (1559), Michel de Seurre (1560-2),
Paul de Foix (1562-6), Jacques Bochetel, Sieur de la Forest (1566-8),
Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe-F^nelon (1568-75), Michel de C^telnau,
Sieur de Mauvissi6re (1575-85), Guillaume de L’Aubespine, Baron de
Chasteauheuf (1585-9), Le Sieur de Beauvoir (de La Nocte) (1589-98 ?),
Le Sieur Thumery de-Boissise (1598-1601), Christophe de Harlay, Comte
de Beaumont (1601-5), Antoine Le F^vre, Sieur de la Boderie (i6o6-n),
Samuel Spifame, Sieur des Bisseaux (1611-15), Gaspard Dauvet, Sieur
des Marets (1615-18). Complete lists of lieger and extraordinary ambas-
sadors, with notes of the manusenpts containing their dispatches, are given
by A. Baschet in Reports of Deputy Keeper of the Records, xxxvii, App. I,
1 88 ; xxxix, App. 573 ; and C. H. Firth and S. C. Lomax, Notes on the
Diplomatic Relations of England and France, 1603-88 (1906) ; cf. General
BihL Note, s.v, Beaumont, Boissise, La Boderie, La Mothe.

* The Spanish ambassadors during 1558-84 were Don Gomez Suarez
de Figueroa, Count of F6ria (Jan. 1558-May 1559), Don Alvaro de la
Quadra, Bishop of Aquila (May 1559-Aug. 1563), Don Diego Guzman dc
Silva (Jan. 1564-Sept. 1568), Don Guerau de Spes (Sept. 1568-Dec. 1571),
Don Bernardino de Mendoza (March 1578-Jan. 1584) ; their dispatches
are in Coleccidn de Documentos InSditos para la Historia de Espaiia, Ixxxvii,
Ixxxix— xcii, and are calendared, with those of Antonio de Guaras, a mer-
chant who acted as agent I573“"7. >n M. A. S. Hume. Calendar of Letters

ELIZABETH AND JAMES 25

in spite of overtures to Venice, until the last few months of
the reign, when the Doge and Senate sent over the Secretary
Scaramelli.^ The accession of James and the peace with
Spain brought about a consideAble change in international
relations, and henceforward there were regularly ‘ lieger ’
ambassadors from France, Spain, Vefiice, and Flanders, as
well as ambassadors or agents from the Dutch states, Savoy
and Florence. For the entertainment of these an occasional
dinner or supper with the King sufficed, together with invita-
tions to such ceremonies of state, revels, and tilts as were
held in ordinary course. But the revels were perturbed and
an infinity of trouble given to the officials who organized
them by the persistent jealousies and disputes for precedence
which prevailed amongst the diplomatic representatives them-
selves. . The records of these intrigues, which especially
centred round the great Court masks, and often determined
the dates on which they were held, occupy much space in
the dispatches sent home to Paris and to Venice, and furnished
Sir John Finet in 1656 with material for the curious pages of
his Philoxenis. The rival claims of the * Catholic ’ King of
France and the * most Christian ’ King of Spain to be regarded
as the first Sovereign in Christendom had already caused

and State Papers relating to English Affairs, preserved principally in the
Archives of Simancas (1892-9, cited as Sp. P.). The ambassadors 1603-16
were Don Juan de Taxis, Count of Villa Mediana (Aug. 160 3- July 1605),
Don Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Duke of Frias and Constable of Castile,
and Alessandro Rovida, Senator of Milan (extraordinary as commissioners,
with John de Ligne, Mnce of Braban^on and Count of Aremberg, Juan
Richardot, Councillor of State, and Ludovic Verreyken, Audiencier, repre-
senting the Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella of Flanders, foi
the treaty of Aug. 1604), Don Pedro de Zuniga (July 1605-May 1610),
Don Fernando de Giron (extraordinary, 1608-9), Don Alonzo de Velasco
(May i6io-Aug. 1613), Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, afterwards Conde
de Gondomar (Aug. 1613). Their dispatches are not in print, but a Relacion
de la Jornada del Condestable de Castilla is in the Coleccion de

Documentos Iniditos, Ixxi. 467.

* The Venetian ambassadors were Giovanni Carlo Scaramelh (Secretary,
Feb.-Nov. 1603), Pietro Duodo (extraordinary, 1603), Nicol6 Molin (Nov.
1603-Dec. 1605), Giorgio Giustinian (Dec. 1605-Oct. 1608), Marc' Antonio
Correr (Oct. 1608- Apr. 1611), Francesco Contanni (extraordinary, 1610),
Antonio Foscarini (Apr. i6ii-Dec. 1615), Gregorio l^rbarigo (Sept. 1615-
May 1616). Reports of the state of England by Molin, Contanni, and
Correr are in N. Barozzi e Guglielmo Berchet, Le Relazioni degli Stati
Europei . . . net secolo decimosettimo, iv (1863). The current dispatches
are ^endared in Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to
English Affairs ... in Venice and . . . Northern Italy (cited as V. P.),
A report to the Senate by Zuanne Falier and others who visited England
privately in 1575 states that they were advised by a Bolognese groom
of the privy chamber, favoured by Elizabeth as an excellent musician
[? Alfonso Ferrabosco], to suggest the desirability of an embassy (F. P.

26

THE COURT

trouble as far back as 1564.^ The question had naturally
been in abeyance during the rupture with Spain. Under
James it broke out again, and each ambassador had the
strictest order from his gov?rnment not to abate a jot or
tittle of his full claims to precedence. James, being rex
pacificiis^ had no desire to commit himself to a decision on
so knotty a point, and did his best to evade it; by not inviting
both ambassadors to the same festivity. But even then one
festivity differed from another in glory, and the attempt to
keep an even balance gave rise to endless tracasseries. During
the earlier years it seems clear that a variety of causes,
amongst which must be counted his own superior astuteness,
a liberal distribution of bribes, the Spanish proclivities of
Anne, and probably also the deliberate trend of James’s
foreign policy, enabled Juan de Taxis to snatch more than
one advantage from his French rivals. He secured an invita-
tion to the Queen’s mask both in 1604 and 1605. This
double rebuff led to a change in the French embassy, and
a similar success of De Taxis in 1608 so infuriated Henri IV
that he threatened to withdraw his ambassador altogether,
until James judged it discreet to call his attention to the still
unpaid financial obligations which he had incurred to the
English Crown in the previous reign. After the death of Henri
in 1610 and the consequent rapprochement between France
and Spain, the balance of political forces shifted, and, for a
time at least, the English Court laid itself out to gratify rather
than humiliate the French. Minor bones of precedence were
worried between Venice and Flanders, and between Florence
and Savoy, while the Spanish ambassador took offence if he
was asked to appear in public with the representative of the
revolted Spanish provinces of the Netherlands.^

vii. 524). Retiring Venetian ambassadors were sometimes knighted and
given a lion of England to quarter on their shields (V, P, xii. 163 ; xiv. 85).

» Sp. P. i. 382, 385. 403, 451, 545.

* 5 . P. D., Jac, /, vi. 21 ; xii. i6 ; Winwood, iii. 155 ; P. L. de Ker-
maingant. Mission de Christophe de Harlay, 173, 252 ; De la Boderie,
Ambassades, i. 240, 262, 271, 277. 291, 353; iii. 1-192 passim ; V,p\
X. 139. 149. 212, 234, 388, 408 ; xi. 83, 86, 212. I have given some details
in relation to the masks in ch. xxiii ; cf. also ch. vi. There is a connected
narrative of the Franco- Spanish disputes in M. Sullivan, Court Masques
of James /, which perhaps lays insufihcient stress on incidents occurring
at state ceremonies and tilts as distinct from masks.

II

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

[Bibltographtcal Note. — There is no systematic history of the household,
but the growing tendency, notable in such recent works as those of Pro-
fessor Baldwin and Professor Tout, to dwell on the administrative, as
distinct from the ‘ constitutional aspect of politics suggests that the gap
may some day be filled. A useful short study is R. H. Gretton, The King’s
Government (1913). Of the numerous books bearing more or less directly
on the subject, I give here mainly those which I have found of practical
value in writing this chapter. Pirofessor Tout's Chapters in the Admini-
strative History of Mediaeval England, of which the first two volumes have
subsequently (1920) appeared, is of course of fundamental importance.
The best worked section is that of mediaeval ongms The general surveys
of W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and
Development (i88o), and W. R. Anson, The Law and Custom of the Con-
stitution (1886-92), may be supplemented for the earliest period by L. M.
Larson, The King’s Household in England before the Norman Conquest
(1904) ; for the eleventh to thirteenth centuries by H. W. C. Davis, Regesta
Regum Anglo- Normannorum, 1 (1913)* T. Madox, History and Antiquities
of the Exchequer (1769), R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century
(1912), J. H, Round, The King’s Serjeants and Officers of State (1911), and
L. W. Vernon Harcourt, His Grace the Steward and the Trial of Peers
(1907) ; for the fourteenth century by T. F. Tout, The Place of the Reign
of Edward II in English History (1914), J. C Davies, The Baronial Opposi-
tion to Edward II (1918), F. J. Furnivall and R. E. G. Kirk, Life Records
of Chaucer (1875-1900), and J. R. Hulbert, Chaucer’s Official Life (1912) ;
for the fifteenth century by C, Plummer, Sir John Fortescue’s Governance
of England (1885), and by the ‘ courtesy books ' or treatises on domestic
service and etiquette in F. J. Furmvall, The Babees Book, &c. (1868,
E. E. T. S.), Queen Elizabeth’s Achademy, &c. (1869, E. E. T. S.), and
R. W. Chambers, A Fifteenth-Century Courtesy Book (1914, E. E. T. S.) ;
for the Privy Council by N. H. Nicolas, Proceedings and Ordinances of
the Privy Council (1834-7), J. R. Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council (1890-
1907), A. V. Dicey, The Privy Council (1887), J. F, Baldwin, The King’s
Council in England during the Middle Ages (i9i3)» T. F. T. Plucknett,
The Place of the Council in the Fifteenth Century (1918, 4 R. Hist. Soc.
Trans, i. 157), E. Percy, The Privy Council under the Tudors (1907), and
C. Hornemann, Das Privy Council von England zur Zeit der Konigin
Elisabeth (1912) ; and for the Star Chamber, W. P. Baildon's edition of
John Hawarde’s Reportesdel Cases in Camera (1894), and Scofield,

The Court of Star Chamber (1900). Some of the above extend to the
sixteenth century ; but in the main the Tudor-Stuart period has received
less attention than it deserves. Even the lists of the great officers, as
given in the ordinary books of reference, are generally incorrect. The
most valuable summary is the quite recent one of E. P. Cheyney, History
of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth, i (1914).
^muel Pegge set out to write an account of the Hospitium Regis and
published four sections, on the Esquires of the Body, the Gentlemen of the
Pnvy Chamber, the Gentlemen Pensioners, and the Yeomen of the Guard

28

THE COURT

as a first volume of CuricUia ; or an Historical Account of the Royal House-
hold (1791). From the material left at his death, J. Nichols published
two more, on Somerset House and the Serjeants at Arms, in a second
volume of Curialia (1806), and sonv^ fragments in Curialia Miscellanea
(1818). Other special studies are F. S. Thomas, Notes of Materials for
the History of Public Departments (1846). and The Ancient Exchequer of
England (1848), N. Carlisle, An Inquiry into the Place and Quality of the
Gentlemen of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Chamber (1829), E. K.
Chambers, The Elizabethan Lords Chamberlain (1907, Malone Soc. Collec-
tions, i. 31), W. Nagel, Annalen der Engltschen Hofmusik (1894, Beilage
zu den Monatsheften fur Musikgeschichte, 26), H. C. De Lafontaine, The
King's Musick (1909), Lists of the King's Musicians (Musical Antiquary,
i-iv, passim). A. P. Newton's valuable paper on The King's Chamber
under the Early Tudors (1917, E. H. R. xxxii. 348) appeared after my
paragraphs on the Treasurer of the Chamber were written, but has helped
me to revise them. An account of the post-Restoration household is given
in J. Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitiae, or The Present State of England
(1669), which became an annual ; and this, with the works of Pegge and
Carlisle, were drawn upon for the historical part of W. J. Thoms, The
Book of Court (1838). The modem household is the subject of W. A.
Lindsay, The Royal Household (1898). A summary, useful for comparison,
of the sixteenth-century French household, is in L. Batiffol, The Century
of the Renaissance (1916, tr.), 92.

There is, of course, ample material for the historian of the Tudor-Stuart
Household when he presents himself. The personal references of annalists,
diplomatists, and letter- writers (cf. Bibl. Note to ch. i) help out the
more formal documents preserved in large numbers in the Record Office
(cf . S. R. Scargill-Bird, Guide to Various Classes of Documents in the Public
Record Office^, 1908) and the British Museum (cf. sections on Public Revenue
and State Establishments in Classified Catalogue of Manuscripts), of which
a few have been printed in A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for
the Government of the Royal Household (Society of Antiquaries, 1790, cited
as H. O.), in J. Nichols, Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Eliza-
beth!^ (ifi23), and Progresses, Processions, and Festivities of James I (1828),
and elsewhere. The Record Office, in addition to many records, such as
those of the Auditors of Prests (cf. App. B), which relate to the House-
hold, contains the special archives of the Lord Chamberlain's Department
and the Lord Steward’s Department themselves ; both, however, are very
fragmentary. The earlier documents of the Lord Chamberlain’s Depart-
ment mainly relate to the Wardrobe. The Warrant books only begin
about the reign of Charles I ; a selection of entnes bearing upon the
stage is given by C. C. Stopes in Jahrbuch, xlvi. 92. The papers in the
British Museum are partly official records which have strayed from their
proper custody, partly the collections of antiquaries, and partly the
administrative memoranda of ministers such as Lord Burghley, Lord
Salisbury, and Sir Julius Caesar. Similar collections in private hands are
calendared in the reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, and
in particular in the Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury
(1883-1915, cited as Cecil MSS. or Hatfield MSS.). The most important
documents for tracing the history of the household consist (a) of account-
books, (b) of royal ordinances and of ceremonials either for the household
as a whole or for some branch of it, to the more comprehensive of which
are sometimes attached schedules of offices with the fees and other
allowances belonging to them, and (c) lists of the actual occupants of
offices drawn up from time to time for various administrative purposes.
The most complete lists seem to be those of officers receiving liveries at

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

29

coronations and funerals. These are appended to the special Accounts
of the Masters of the Wardrobe for such ceremonies, and copies, covering
inter alia the coronation {1559) and funeral (1603) of Elizabeth, the
coronation (1604) and funeral (1625) ^f James, the funeral (1612) of Henry,
and the funeral (1619) of Anne, are preserved as precedents in Lord
Chamberlain's Records, ii. 4-6. On the other hand, it is necessary to
exercise caution in using the very numerous lists which bear some such
title as * A Generali Collection of all the Offices in England with their
Fees in her Maie6ties Gift Of these I have noted the following :
Stowe MS. 571, f. 6 (1552) ; Harl. MS. 240 (1545-53) ; Stowe MS. 571,

133 ( i 575“8 o ) ; Stowe MS. 571, f. 159 (1587-90) ; Lansd. MS. 171,
f. 246^^ (1587-91): Cotton MS., Titus B hi, f. 163^ (1585-93); S. P. D.,
Eliz. ccxxi (1588-93) ; Lord Chamberlain's Records, v. 33 (1593) ; Hargrave
MS. 215 (1592-5) ; Stowe MS. 572, f. 26 (1592-6) ; Harl. MS. 2078, f. 6
(1592-6) ; H. O. 241 (misdated 1578) from Peck, 1. 51 (1598) ; Addl. MS.
35848 (1605-7) I ^d4l. MS. 38008 (1605-7) Archaeologia, xv. 72 (1606) ;
Stowe MS. 574 (temp. Jac I) ; Stowe MS. 575 (1616), The dates are
mostly approximate, rendered possible by the fact that the occupants of
a few of the chief posts are usually named. The list of 1552 alone has
all the names and is in the full sense an Establishment List. The rest
should probably be regarded not as official lists but as convenient hand-
books prepared for courtiers seeking patronage Errors of transcription
are frequent, and often recur in several manuscripts. Stowe MS. 574 is
interesting, because a second hand has corrected several errors. It seems
pretty clear that the names of offices were sometimes retained on these
lists after the offices were in fact obsolete. They are not limited to
Household Offices, but are usually arranged in four sections, Courts of
Justice, Household (i, Household proper, 2, Standing offices ; cf p. 49),
Military Posts, Keeperships (cf. p. ii). They include fees payable in
the household, as well as at the Exchequer ; and have prototypes, in less
fixed form, in lists temp. Hen. VIII (Brewer, n. 873 ; hi 364 ; iv. 868).
A more careful list, of somewhat similar type, with names appended, but
limited to fees payable at the Exchequer, is to be found in the abstract
of revenue and expenditure in 1617 printed with the pamphlet Truth
Brought to Light and Discovered by Time (1651, cited as Abstract).

But there are no comprehensive ordinances for the Tudor-Stuart House-
hold, which must largely be studied from its origins. The best text of
the Constitutio Domus Regis of Henry I (c. 1135) is in T. Hearne, Ltber
Niger Scaccarii^ (i774). i- 34^ . 21 good one in H. Hall, The Red Book
of the Exchequer (1896, Rolls Series), lii. 807. For Edward I we have
unprinted ordinances of 1279 (Addl. MS. 4565 H ; Lord Steward’s Mtsc.
298), and the description of the palace jurisdictions by a contemporary
lawyer (c. 1290) in John Selden's edition of Fleta, seu Commentarius Juris
Anglicani (1685) ; for Edward II ordinances of 1318 and 1323 edited
from the French original in Tout, 267, and from a translation by Francis
Tate (1601) in Life Records of Chaucer, 11. i, together with related Exchequer
ordinances in Hall, lii. 908, 930. Ordinances of Edward III, not known
to be extant, are referred to by the compiler of the Liber Niger Domus
Regis Angliae in the reign of Edward IV. Of the Liber Niger a large
number of manuscripts exist (Lord Steward’s Misc. 299 , Exchequer T. of
R. Mtsc, 230 ; Harl. MSS. 293, f. 19 ; 298, f. 41 ; 369, f. 56^ ; 610, f. i ;
642, f. 196V ; Soc. Antiq. MS.). It is not certain from which of these
the bad text in H. O. 13 is printed ; probably it used the last two. The
Liber Niger is less an ordinance than an unfinished literary treatise by
a household clerk, probably motived by the actual ordinances of 1478,
of which an unprinted copy is in Exchequer T. of R. Misc. 206. An

30

THE COURT

ordinance of Henry VII (1493) and a ceremonial of the same reign are
in H. O. 107. The documents of Henry VIII's time are complicated.
There appear to be three sets of ordinances : (a) the Eltham Articles
drawn up by Wolsey (Halle, ii. 56) ifi Jan. 1526 {Lord Steward's Misc. 299,
ff. 158, 163 ; Exchequer T. of R. Misc. 231 ; H. O. 137-61, from Harl. MS.
642) ; (b) ordinances related to a * new book of household \ c. 1540 {H. O.
228-40) ; (c) scattered ordinances, c. 1532-44 (H. O. 208-27). Subsidiary
lists and documents of about the period of (a) are in Lord Steward's Misc.
299, and, perhaps with some of other dates, in Brewer, iv. i. 860. Those
printed from a Dunch MS. in Genealogist, xxix, xxx, appear to belong
to the ‘ new book ' of (b). A third set, of c. 1544-6, are in H. O. 165-207.
Much other material is scattered through the twenty-one volumes of the
Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of
Henry VIII (1862-1910, cited as Brewer), including some of earlier date
than the Eltham Articles. — I need hardly add that for the purposes of
this chapter I have rarely been able to go beyond printed sources.]

The ordering of court life and ceremonial was in the hands
of a group of departments which made up the somewhat
complicated establishment of the royal Household. But the
Household, at a time when the personal capacity of the Crown
was as yet imperfectly differentiated from its national capa-
city, was not merely a domestic organization ; it was still
to a large extent an instrument of central executive govern-
ment. It must in fact be regarded as the direct descendant
of the eleventh-century curia regis^ through which all the
important functions, deliberative, judicial, financial, and
administrative, had been carried out. The curia had con-
sisted partly of the territorial magnates, earls, and barons,
who had been, or whose fathers had been, the King’s comitatus
in battle ; partly of knights still in attendance upon the
King’s person, and hoping some day, in reward for their
services, to become territorial magnates in turn ; partly, and
to an increasing extent as government became more com-
plicated and difficult, of clerks whose trained skill with the
pen and with figures made them more practically useful than
the lay knights in all those branches of affairs which entailed
book-keeping and correspondence. All the members of the
curia^ in smaller or greater numbers, according to the magni-
tude of the business to be transacted and the willingness of
the lords to leave their estates, sat with the King from time
to time, and advised him as his consilium ; but except on
great occasions of state it was left to the knights to wait at
his table and order his servants about, and to the clerks to
write and send his letters, and to act as his assessors
or his deputies in the exercise of justice or the collection
and spending of his revenue. In course of time some of
the functions of the original curia had become specialized
in distinct departments, which acquired a permanent habi-

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 31

tation at Westminster, ceased to follow the King’s wander-
ings, and were no longer regarded as part of the personal
Household. Thus the curia a^ a judicial body became the
Courts of Law ; the curia as a financial body became the
Exchequer ; while at a somewhat later date the Chancery
undertook the double function of issuing royal grants and
other formal correspondence of the Crown, and of supple-
menting the Courts of Law by exercising an equitable juris-
diction in cases which ordinary' law was inadequate to cover.
To the central curia or Household, still composed of lay and
clerical officers lodged in the King’s palace and eating in his
hall, wherever that might happen to be, three things were
left. It ministered to the material well-being and splendour
of the Sovereign himself ; it exercised under his personal
direction such functions of administration, for example the
control of foreign policy and war, as had not passed to the
specialized departments; and, perhaps most important of
all, it remained potentially able to resume at his will the
exercise of functions precisely analogous to those which had
so passed. This paradox of the duplicate exercise of royal
functions, through the specialized departments and through
the Household, lies at the bottom of an understanding of
mediaeval government.

The differentiation of the Courts of Law, the Exchequer,
and the Chancery from the Household was complete by the
thirteenth century ; but the same tendency towards the
budding off of quasi-independent departments of state from
the administrative nucleus continued to manifest itself in
a minor degree up to and even, for all their centralizing
instinct, within the period of the Tudors. Moreover, as the
scale of the Household became larger and its individual
ministers began to require assistance, there grew up a corre-
sponding tendency towards the formation of separate offices
within the nucleus itself. The staffing of these offices with
servants of various grades, their responsibilities and inter-
relations, and the control of them through the chief officers
of the Household, were determined by royal ordinances, which
go into minute detail, and reveal a complex organization,
based upon long-standing tradition, and at the same time
flexible in its capacity of adaptation to shifting circumstances.
The main structure of the Household, as we find it under
Elizabeth, appears to have been already fixed in the time of
Edward IV and even in that of Edward 1 1, although minor
changes had been introduced, largely through Tudor imita-
tion of the French hStel du roi, just as there had been minor
changes under Richard II and his Lancastrian successors.

32

THE COURT

some of which are noted to our advantage by a clerk of
literary tastes, who about 1478 bethought him to compile in
the so-called Liber Niger sy systematic account or rationale
of the establishment in which doubtless he played a part. And
the beginnings of the same structure can be traced back
farther still, through ordinances of Edward I in 1279 l^he
Constitutio Domus Regis as it stood at the end of Henry Ts
reign in 1135, and even perhaps, so far as the principal
officers are concerned, to the Normanized Anglo-Saxon Court
of pre-Conquest days. And after Elizabeth’s reign the
structure lasted, again with modifications of detail, for nearly
two centuries more, until it was somewhat severely over-
hauled, in a moment of reforming zeal, by what is known
as Burke’s Act of 1782.^ This conservatism of structure may
perhaps justify us in finding an explanation of the tripartite
character which the organization of the Household at every
stage displays, as arising naturally out of the local arrange-
ment of a primitive royal habitation. The palace stood in
a court-yard, and it consisted essentially of a hall where the
King feasted and took counsel with his comitatus^ and of
a chamber where he retired to sleep and to be private, and
where he probably kept his treasure-chest. The duties of
his personal servants fell either in the court-yard or in th^
hall or in the chamber. In the court-yard the constabularii
drilled the royal body-guard and the marescalli looked after
the horses ; in the hall the dapiferi and the pincernae
ministered food and drink ; in the chamber the camerarii
or ctcbictUariij aided as time went on by the clerici^ watched
the King’s treasure and his bed, and stood ready to receive
and transmit his personal mandates. Originally, it would
seem, there were several officers of each class. Afterwards
they were reduced to one, or one was chosen as magister over
the rest ; whatever the process, a single chief officer, with
a group of subordinates beneath him, emerges as repre-
sentative of each of the three departments. Perhaps the
change was assisted by the demand of the barons, jealous of
the rise in their absence of new men at Court, to have House-
hold posts conferred upon them as part of their hereditaments.
By the middle of the twelfth century there were already
a hereditary Great Chamberlain, a High Steward, a High
Constable, a Chief Butler, and an Earl Marshal.^ But,

* 22 George III, c. 82.

* Stubbs, i. 382 ; Round, 68, 76, 82, 112, 140 ; Tout, 67. By Elizabeth's
accession the High Stewardship and High Constableship had reverted to
the Crown, and the offices were only temporarily conferred for occasions
of state. The Great Chamberlainship was de ture in the same position,
but was accepted under a misunderstanding as hereditary in the house

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

33

obviously, if the King was in the habit of appointing two
chamberlains or two stewards, he could make one of each
pair hereditary, and still have another at his own appoint-
ment, And he could call on the Hereditary officer to officiate
on state occasions and the appointed officer to officiate
in daily life. The hereditary man would have the greater
dignity and the appointed man the greater power. This,
rather than deputation by the hereditary officers, seems to
be the explanation of the existence of a Chamberlain of the
Household side by side with the Lord Great Chamberlain
and of a Steward of the Household side by side with the
Lord High Steward, It is really only another example of
the duplication of functions, through officers of state on the
one hand, and Household officers on the other, to which
attention has already been called ; with the added feature
that in this case the officers of state seem to have had sine-
cures from the beginning.

The tripartite organization is traceable clearly enough in
the Household of Elizabeth, as in that of her predecessors.
There was, of course, a close co-operation at many points
between the different departments ; and, indeed, the sim-
plicity of the original scheme had inevitably be^'n interfered
with, as the sovereigns began more and more to retire from
their hall and to subdivide their chamber in order to adapt
it to the complicated needs of an increasingly luxurious
private life. The department of the court-yard, moreover,
would appear, long before Elizabeth's time, to have shed
many of what must be supposed to have been its original
functions. The hereditary Lord High Constable had left no
constabularius behind him at court, and although the Earl
Marshal, also hereditary, continued to exercise certain func-
tions, such as an oversight over the heralds, he was in no
sense the head of a Household department. The Knight
Marshal, who exercised a jurisdiction over breaches of peace
within the verge {virgata) of twelve leagues round the court,
was nominally at least his deputy, but the only other marshals

of De Vere, Earls of Oxford. The Chief Butlership was hereditary in the
house of Fitzalan, Earls of Arundel, and the Earl Marshalship in that of
Howard, Dukes of Norfolk. It reverted on the attainder of Thomas
4th Duke in 1572. On 28 Dec. 1597 it was conferred on Robert Earl
of Essex, and after his execution on 25 Feb. 1601 was placed in com-
mission. These great offices, granted as hereditaments, are to be dis-
tinguished from serjeanties, or grants of land per servientiam to the holders
of minor household posts, which thus became hereditary. Grants of
serj^nties ceased early in the thirteenth century, and the only household
duties exercised by their holders in the sixteenth century were formal
ones on special occasions.

2229*1 D

34

THE COURT

in the Household were officers of the Hall. Similarly the over-
sight of the guard seems to have passed to the Chamberlain.
Nor had the Marshal any longer the responsibility for the
stable which the etymology of his name suggests.^ The
Stable was, indeed, still a distinct department, but its head
was the Master of the Horse, who, although he ranked as one
of the three chief officers of the Household, was of com-
paratively recent origin.^

By a somewhat troublesome variation in the use of terms,
the Lord Steward’s department is sometimes called the
‘ Household ’ in a very narrow sense, which excludes the
Chamber and the Stable. The author of the Liher Niger
distinguishes it as the domus providentiae from the Chamber
as the domus magnificentiae,^ Roughly speaking, it concerned
itself with the material necessities, the food and drink, the
lighting and the fuel, of the Sovereign and his court, while
all else that ministered to his personal life and the dignity
of his state, his lodging and his apparel, his entertainments,
his study and his recreations, fell within the sphere of the
Chamber. Its original nucleus was still represented under
Elizabeth by the officers of the Hall, Marshals, Sewers, and
Surveyors ; but the Hall had shrunk in importance since
the Sovereign had ceased to dine in it, and some of these
posts had long been duplicated within the Chamber itself,
and even there were tending to become honorific rather than
effective.^ The real functions of the department were now

‘ The derivation is through the French from O. H G. marascalh (mar ah,
horse ; scalh, servant). Round, 84, traces an early connexion of the
marshal with the stable.

2 A Squire of the Body held the office of Master of the Horse in 1480
(Nicolas, Wardrobe Acets, of Ed. IV). The term ‘Master', generally
applied to heads of offices in the outer ring of the Household, does not
seem to be of very early origin. It probably replaces the fourteenth-
century ‘ Serjeant '. Sir Thomas Cawarden got a * Mastership ' of the
Revels in 1544, as he ‘ did mislyke to be tearmed a Senaunt because of
his better countenaunce of roome and place beinge of the kinges maiesties
privye Chamber ' {Tudor Revels, 2). The Mastership of the Horse was
held by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester (ii Jan. 1559-
87), Robert Earl of Essex (23 Dec. 1587-25 Feb. 1601), Edward Somerset,
4th Earl of Worcester (deputy Dec. 1597 ; Master 21 Apr. 1601-2 Jan.
1616), Sir George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham (3 Jan. 1616).
The appointment, like that of other * Masters ', but unlike that of the
Chamberlain and Steward, was by patent and carried a fee of 1,000 marks
(;^666 13s. 4^.). Amongst the lesser Stable officers were the royal Foot-
men, whom we might expect to find in the Chamber.

» H. O. 19. 55.

* For tne functions of Hall officers, as understood in the fifteenth century,
cf. the ‘ courtesy ' books, especially J. Russell's Boke of Nurture, the
anonymous Boke of Kervynge and Boke of Curtesye (Furnivall, Babee*s
Book), and R. W. Chambers, A Fifteenth-Century Courtesy Book.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 35

exercised in the subsidiary offices of provision, which had
grown up round the Hall, Of these there were twenty, each
under a Serjeant or other head jvith an appropriate staff of
clerks, yeomen, grooms, pages, and children. They were the
Kitchen, the Bake-house, the Pantry, the Cellar, the Buttery,
the Pitcher-house, the Spicery, the Chandlery, the Wafery,
the Confectionery, the Ewery, the Laundry, the Larder, the
Boiling-house, the Accatry, the Poultry, the Scalding-house,
the Pastry, the Scullery, and the Woodyard. The department
also included the Almonry under a Lord High Almoner, who
was an ecclesiastic, and the Porters. Administrative control
was exercised by the Board of Green Cloth, consisting of the
Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household, and the Cofferer
or household cashier.^ These had the assistance of a staff of
clerks and clerk comptrollers, known as the Counting House.
Above all was the chief officer of the department, the Lord
Steward of the Household. The Steward, whose name seems
to be an exact equivalent for both the Latin terms dapifer
and Senescallus^ is not likely to have had in the beginning
any priority over the camerarius ; but historical reasons had
brought him to the forefront towards the end of the thirteenth
century, and thereafter he continued to rank as first officer
of the Household. Henry VIII, following a French analogy,
had renamed him Grand Master of the Household, but the
new term had not permanently succeeded in establishing
itself. Under Elizabeth the post was sometimes left vacant.
But it was always filled during the session of a Parliament,
for it was the ancient custom for the lords of Parliament to
dine at the Lord Steward’s table in the court. ^ In the absence

* The Treasurers of the Household were Sir Thomas Cheyne (1558--9),
Sir Thomas Parry (1559-70), Sir Francis Knollys (1570-96), Roger Lord
North (1596-1600), Sir William Knollys, afterwards Lord Knollys (1602-
16) ; the Comptrollers, Sir Thomas Parry (1558-9), Sir Edward Rogers
(i559-67)» Sir James Croft (1570-90), Sir William Knollys (1596-1602),
Sir Edward Wotton, afterwards Lord Wotton (1602-16) ; cf. D. N. B.,
passim (with some errors) ; Dasent, vii. 3, 43 ; V. P. vii. i ; Sp. P.
11. 227 ; Wnght, 1. 355 ; Sadletr Papers, li. 368 ; Carew Correspondence

(C.S.), 152.

^ The Lords Steward were Henry Earl of Arundel (1558-64), William
Earl of Pembroke (1567-70), Edward Earl of Lincoln (1581-4), Robert
Earl of Leicester (1585-8), Henry Earl of Derby (1588-93), Charles Earl
of Nottingham (1597-1615), Ludovick Duke of Lennox and afterwards
Richmond (1615-24) , cf. Dasent, xxviii. 60, 107 ; 5 . P. D. Eltz. clxxiii.
94 I Stowe, 664 ; Sc. P. ix. 61 1 ; Sp. P. 1. 18, 368, 631 ; 11. 239, 455 ;
iv. 122; V. P. vii. 3; Hatfield MSS. i. 452; xi. 478; Sydney Papers,

75» 77 ; Hawarde, 84 ; Camden (trans.), 124, 226, 373, and James, 14 ;
La Mothe F^nelon, ii. 332; iv. 437; v. 60; Goodman, 1. 178, 191 ;
Cheyney, 28; Lords Journals, i. 543, 581 ; ii. 21, 62, 64, 116, 146, 169,
192, 227, &c. ; Wright, Arthur Hall, 194-7.

THE COURT

36

of a Lord Steward, the department was managed, under some
general supervision from the Lord Chamberlain, who then
became first officer, by the J'reasurer and Comptroller, who
were important personages with seats on the Privy Council.
The original dapiferi had had as colleagues the pincernae^ but
the Chief Butlership was now an hereditary sinecure, and the
duties were divided between the subordinate office of the
Cellar and the Cupbearer, who was an officer of the Chamber.

We come now to the Lord Chamberlain, incomparably the
most important figure at court in all matters concerned with
entertainments. The camerarii and cuhicidarii are discernible
before the Conquest, and the corresponding Anglo-Saxon
terms appear to be hurpegn^ bedpegn, and hrcegipegn. Perhaps
the hrcegl or wardrobe was already becoming separated from
the hut or bed-chamber.^ In the days of William Rufus one
Herbert was regis cubicularius et thesaurarius.^ This was
before the Exchequer under its Lord High Treasurer had
branched off as a separate department of state, but the post
of Chamberlain of the Exchequer continued for many centuries
to testify to the original location of the treasure chest in the
camera. About 1135 there was a magister camerarius^ the
equal in salary and allowances of the cancellarius^ the dapiferi^
the magister pincerna^ the thesaurarius^ and the constabularii.
There were also other camerarii of lower degrees taking turns
of duty, and a special camerarius candelae^ ranking lower
still.* Presumably the magister camerarius became the here-
ditary Lord Great Chamberlain, whose coronation services,
which are connected with the charge of the King’s bed-
chamber, the handing of a basin and towel at the banquet,
and the preparation of the royal oblations, afford a sufficient
indication of the duties of the court office.^ And on the
retirement of the hereditary officer from court, it seems
probable that one of the other camerarii advanced to the
position of acting magister. At any rate, when the treatise
known as Fleta was compiled about 1290, there was a single
camerarius with a sub-minister and other officers beneath
him. Perhaps he was by this time barely the equal of the
senescallus^ to whom he sat as assessor in the court de placitis

* Larson, 132 ; J. H. Round, The Officers of Edward the Confessor in
E. H. R. XIX. 90.

* Hist. Mon. Abingdon, ii. 43.

® Constitutio Domus Regis in H. Hall, Red Book of Exchequer, iii. 807 ;
Heame, Liber Niger Scaccarii, i. 352 : * Magister Camerarius par est
Dapifero in lib[er]acione . . . Camerarius qui vice sua servit. ii solid, in
die . . . Cameranus Candelae, vui<* in die . . . Camerarii sine liberacione in
domo comedent, si voluerint ’ ; cf. Stubbs, i. 391 ; Poole, 96 ; Round, 62.

* Round, 1 12.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

37

Aulae RegiSy although he had also an independent jurisdiction
over his own officers and those of the Wardrobe, who were
exempt from the Steward’s coi^rt.^ On the other hand he
was, as Robert of Westminster calls him, ‘ custos capitis
regis and the author of Fleta tells us in another connexion
that ‘ in hospitio pro regula habetur, quod quanto pro-
pinquior sit quis Regi, tanto dignior On the whole it
seems probable that, whatever his traditional status may
have been, the practical tendency of the extensive political
use made by Edward I of the Steward and the clerical officers
of the Wardrobe was to throw the Chamberlain into the
background.® We also learn from Fleta that it was the
business of the Chamberlain to look after the King’s bed and
chamber, and that as fees he had his keep in court, fines
from ecclesiastic and la>^ homagers, the disused plenishings
of the camera^ and a share of all gifts and offerings of food
made to the King.^

‘ Fleta, ii. 2 : ‘ Auditis querimouiis iniuriarum in aula regia audirc
et terminare [Senescallum], assumptis sibi Camerario, hostiario, vel mare-
scallo aulae militibus, vel aliquo illorum, sx omnes interesse non possint ’ ;
li. 6 : * Camerarius autem et subminister Camerarii a junsdictione Sene-
scalli et Marescalli exempt! sunt, veluti omnes garderobani ut in quibus-
dam ; non enim extendit se iurisdictio Senescalli ad modica delicta
Camerariorum vel garderobanorum audienda vel terminanda, eo quod
ex consuetudine hospitii sunt exempti, dum tamen illi de quibus exigi
contigerit curiae coram Senescallo Cameris Regis et Reginae, et garderobae
assidue sunt intendentes ; sed coram ipsis Thesaurario et Camerario
audiantur querimomae de huiusmodi ministris et subditxs suis, et termina-
buntur, praesente tamen clerico Regis ad placita aulae deputato ; ita
quod de finibus et amerciamentis ex huiusmodi placitis provenientibus
nihil Regi depereat/

* Flmes Historiarum, iii. 194 ; cf. Fleta, ii. 16.

® Tout, 12, 68, 169. The ' Seneschal ’ and ‘ chambirleyne ' are on the
same footing as regards fees and allowances in the ordinances of 1318
(Tout, 270). They are knights, and may be bannerets.

* Fleta, ii. 6 : ‘ Debet enim Camerarius decenter disponere pro lecto
Regis, et ut Camerae tapetis et banquenis ornentur, et quod ignes suffi-
cienter fiant in caminis, et providere ne ullus defectus inveniatur quatenus
officium suum contigerit ' ; ii. 7 : * Foeda autem Camerani sunt haec,
parata sibi debent esse quaecunque pro corpore suo sint necessaria ;
videlicet, cibus, potus, busca, et candela ; et de caeteris foedis sic statuitur.
Camerarii Domini Regis habeant de caetero ab Archiepiscopis, Episcopis,
Abbatibus, Prioribus, et aliis personis Ecclesiasticis, Comitibus, Baronibus,
et aliis integram Baroniam tenentibus, rationabilem finem, cum pro
Baroniis suis homagium fecerint aut fidelitatem ; et si partem teneant
Baroniae, tunc rationabilem finem capiant secundum portionem ipsos
contingentem. . . . Permissum est etiam quod Camerarius ex antiqua
consuetudine habeat omnia vetera banqueria et tapetos, curtinas et lecta
Regis, nec non et omnia ornamenta Camerae usitata et derelicta, et de
omnibus exeniis Regi factis Cameram ingredientibus, dum tamen de
victualibus aliquam portionem.'

38

THE COURT

After the break-up of the power of the Wardrobe in the
earlier part of the fourteenth century, the propinquity of
the Chamberlain to the King, gave him an increasing political
importance, and attempts were made by the barons to secure
his appointment in Parliament. Both in that assembly and
in the Privy Council he frequently served as the royal mouth-
piece, and he became the regular channel through which
petitions for the exercise of the royal prerogative of pardon
reached the King.^ But he continued to discharge his domestic
responsibilities, which are detailed both in the Liber Niger
about 1478 and in early Tudor documents.^ The Tudor
change in the relation between the Crown and the nobility,
is well indicated by the fact that, while in the fourteenth
century the Chamberlain had been a banneret or even a simple
knight, in Elizabeth’s time the office was an object of ambi-
tion for earls and barons. But the dual functions, political
and domestic, remained unaltered. The ‘ Lord ’ Chamberlain,
as he was now generally called, was in regular attendance at
court, where his power and responsibility were alike con-
siderable.^ He gave personal attention to the distribution of

* Nicolas, P. C. VI. ccxix.

^ H.O. 31 (1478) : ‘ A chamberlayn for the King in household, the
grete officer sitting in the Kinges chambre ... He presenteth, chargeth,
and dischargeth all suche persounes as be of the Kinges chaumbre, except
all suche officers of household, as ministre for any vytayle for the Kinges
mouthe, or for his chambre ; for all those take theire charge at the grene
cloth in the countynghouse. This is the chief hed of rulers in the Kinges
chambre. . . . Item, he hath the punition of all them that are longing to
the chaumber for any offence or outrage. . . . The Chaumberlayne taketh
his othe and staffe of the King or of his counsayle ; he shall at no tyme
within this courte be covered in his service. . . . Within the Kinges gates,
no man shall harborow or assigne but this chambyrlayn or ussher, or suche
under hym of the King’s chambre havyng theyr power. This chamberlayn
besyly to serche and oversee the King's chambres, and the astate made
therein, to be according, first for all the array longing to his proper royall
person, for his proper beddes, for his proper boarde at meale tymes, for
the diligent doyng in servyng thereof to his honour and pleasure ; to
assigne kervers, cupbearers, assewers, phisitians, almoners, knyghts, or
other wurshypfull astate for the towell, and for the basyn squires of the
body to be attendaunt ' ; 1 16 (1493) : ’ In the absence of the chamberlaine,
the usher shall have the same power to command in like manner ; alsoe,
it is right necessarie for the chamberlaine and ushers to have ever in
remembrance all the highe festival dayes in the yeare, and all other tymes,
what is longing to their office, that they bee not to seeke when neede
is ; for they shall have many lookers-on. And such thinges as the ushers
know not, lett them resort unto the chamberlaine, and aske his advice
at all tymes therein ; and soe the ushers bee excused, and the chamberlaine
to see that hee reveale himselfe at all tymes, that hee may bee beloved,
and feared of all such as belong to the chamber.'

® Goodman, i. 178, speaking of Hunsdon’s time : ‘ The lord chamberlain,
there being at that time no lord steward, is the greatest governor in the

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

39

lodgings in the palace.^ He made the arrangements for the
progress.* He received the ambassadors and others entitled
to a royal audience and conducted them into the presence.*
He was liable to be rated by \he Queen if there was not
enough plate on the cupboard.** He not merely planned the
revels but himself kept order in the banqueting-hall. And
for this purpose the white staff, which was the symbol of his
office, was a practical instrument ready to his hand.® The
delivery of this white staff to him by the Sovereign constituted
his appointment, which was during pleasure ; and at its

King's house ; he disposeth of all things above stairs, he hath a greater
command of the King's guard than the captains hath, he makes all the
chaplains, chooseth most of the King’s servants, and all the pursuivants ;
there being then no dean of the King's chapel, he disposeth of all in the
chapel.’

* Young, Mary Sidney, i6, gives from Sydney Papers, i. 271, and manu-
scripts several letters of 1574-8 from Lady Sidney to Lord Chamberlain
Sussex about her accommodation at court. Heneage rejxnted to Hatton
on 2 Apr. 1585 (Nicolas, Hatton, 415) the Queen’s anger with the Lord
Chamberlain for allowing Raleigh to be put in Hatton’s lodging. Lord
Hunsdon apologizes to Sir Robert Cecil for his ill lodging in 1594 (Hatfield
MSS, iv. 504).

* Cf. ch. iv,

® Cf. App. F. Secretary Walsingham in 1590 refers an applicant for
an audience to the Lord Chamberlain, ' who otherwise will conceave, as
he doth alreadie, that I seke to drawe those matters from him ’ [Hatfield
MSS. iv. 3).

* Sp. P. ii. 606. The default was at the reception of Alen9on’3 envoys
in Aug. 1578. The Calendar makes Sussex ‘ Lord Steward ’, but the
original (Documentos Iniditos, xci. 270) has ‘ gran Camarero '. In 1582,
at the reception of a lord mayor, ‘ some young gentilman, being more
bold than well mannered, did stand upon the carpett of the clothe of
estate, and did allmost leane upon the queshions. Her Highnes found
fault with my Lord Chamberlayn and Vice-Chamberlayn, and with
the Gentlemen Ushers, for suffenng such disorders ’ (Fleetwood to Burghley
in Wright, ii. 174).

* Cf. ch. vi, p. 205, on the misadventure of Jonson and Sir John Roe
in 1603 ; also Jonson’s Jrtsh Mask (1613), 12, ‘ Ish it le fashion to beate
te imbasheters here, and knoke 'hem o’ te heads phit te phoit stick ? ’,
and Beaumont and Fletcher, Maid*s Tragedy (c. i6ii), i. li. 44, ‘ I cannot
blame my lord Calianax for going away : would he were here ! he would
run raging amongst them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own
in the twinkling of an eye ’. John Chamberlain says of Comptroller Sir
Thomas Edmondes in 1617 (Birch, i. 385), ' They say he doth somewhat
too much flourish and fence with his staves, whereof he hath broken two
already, not at tilt, but stickling at the plays this Christmas ’, and Osborne,
James, 75, of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, that * he was intolerable choleric
and offensive, and did not refrain, whilst he was Chamberlain, to break
many wiser heads than his own {vide supra] : M’^. May that translated
Lucan having felt the weight of his staff : which had not his office and
the place, being the Banqueting-house, protected, I question whether he
would ever have struck again *. This was in Feb. 1634 (Strafford Papers,
i. ao7).

40

THE COURT

determination he delivered it up again. The Lord Steward
and the Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household were
similarly appointed, and it is a picturesque touch that at the
funeral of the Sovereign tlie Household officers broke their
white staves over the bier.^ Elizabeth’s Chamberlains had
a fee of £133 6^. 8d. and a table and other allowances at
court ; also a livery from the Great Wardrobe of fourteen
yards of tawny velvet, which had been converted by 1606
into an additional fee of £16.2

Elizabeth’s first Lord Chamberlain was her great-uncle,
Lord William Howard, a younger son of the second Duke
of Norfolk, who had been created Lord Howard of Effingham
in 1554.® He was appointed by 20 November 1558, and
resigned on becoming Lord Privy Seal in July 1572. His
successor was Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex, who
appears to have held office continuously, in spite of occasional
absence from his duties, until his death on 9 June 1583.
Then came Charles, second Lord Howard of Effingham, for
a short period from Christmas 1583 or earlier until his
appointment as Lord Admiral about June 1585 ; and then
on 4 July 1585 Elizabeth’s first cousin, Henry Carey, first
Lord Hunsdon, who established and handed down to his son
the famous company of players which included William
Shakespeare. Hunsdon was himself a soldier rather than
a courtier.* He died on 22 July 1596, and the Chamberlain-
ship passed to William Brooke, seventh Lord Cobham. But
on 5 March 1597 Cobham himself died, and the office reverted
to the house of Hunsdon in the person of George Carey,
second lord, who retained it to the end of the reign. By
this time he was in ill health, and although he was at first
formally continued in his post with the rest of the household,
he was replaced on 4 May 1603 by Thomas, Lord Howard
of Walden, who on the following 21 July was created Earl of
Suffolk. He died on 9 September 1603. Suffolk remained
Lord Chamberlain during the palmy days of the Jacobean

^ Machyn, 183, of Mary's funeral, ' All the offesers whent to the grayffe,
and after brake ther stayffes, and cast them into the grayffe * ; Gawdy,
Letter St 128, of Elizabeth's, ‘ I saw all the whit staves broken uppon ther
heades

* Lord Chamberlains BookSt 81 1, ff. 178, 206, 236, contains warrants to
the Wardrobe for the liveries of Lord Sussex, Lord Howard, and George
Lord Hunsdon. The fee of li(> appears in a memorandum of 1606-7
(Nichols, James, ii. 125).

^ The ordinary books of reference give a very inaccurate list of Eliza-
bethan Chamberlains. I have collected the evidence in M. 5 . C. i. 31.

* Goodman, i. 178, says that Hunsdon was ‘ ever reputed a very honest
man, but a very passionate man, a great swearer, and of little eminency *.
Naunton (ed. Arber, 46) gives a similar account.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

41

revels. But in 1614 he became Lord Treasurer, and on
10 July the Chamberlainship was conferred upon the then
reigning royal favourite, Robert ^arr, Earl of Somerset, much
to the disappointment of Shakespeare’s patron, William
Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, who had to content himself
with a promise of the reversion.^ This, however, fell in
sooner than might have been hoped for. Somerset came to
disaster for his share in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury
in 1615, and on 2 November, shortly .before he was sent to
the Tower, Lord Wotton, the Comptroller of the Household,
came from the King to demand his seals and the white staff.
He handed over the seals, says our informant, the Venetian
ambassador, ‘ and as for the staff, which he pointed out to
him in a corner of the room, he might take it ’. Lord Wotton
replied that the King did not order him to take it, but Somerset
to give it, ‘ which he did *.^ Pembroke was appointed on
23 December 1615 and remained Lord Chamberlain until
3 August 1626, when he was succeeded by his brother Philip
Earl of Montgomery.®

The illness, or employment elsewhere, of a Lord Chamber-
lain sometimes rendered necessary the appointment of a
deputy. Both Howard of Effingham and Hunsdon appear to
have acted in this capacity during Sussex’s tenure of office ;
Howard in 1574-5 and Hunsdon in 1582. Similarly Howard
de Walden acted without having the white staff during the
second Lord Hunsdon’s illness in 1602, and again for a month
before his own appointment in 1603.^ There was indeed
provision for the regular assistance of the Lord Chamberlain
by a Vice-Chamberlain, an officer who had existed at least
as far back as the fourteenth century, and is probably indeed
the ‘ subminister ’ of the thirteenth.® Elizabeth’s fee lists
provide for a Vice-Chamberlain at a fee of £66 135. ^d. and
a table at court. But the post was not always filled up.
Sir Edward Rogers held it from 1558 to 1559, Sir Francis

* Stowe, Annals, 936 ; Birch, James, i. 336 ; Wotton, Letters, ii. 40, 41.

* V. P. xiv. 65 ; Camden, James, 14.

^ Birch, James, i. 382 ; Camden, Jamei>, 15 , V. P. xiv. icxd Philip
Herbert himself became Earl of Pembroke at his brother’s death on
10 Apr. 1630. He took the parliamentary side in politics, and surrendered
his staff on 23 July 1641. Robert Devereux, third Earl ot Essex, although
also a parliamentarian, succeeded him from 24 July 1641 to 12 Apr. 1642
{L. Ch. Records, v. 96).

* M. S. C. 1. 34, 40. Howard of Effingham is described in the Revels
Accounts (Feuillerat, Ehz. 238) as ‘ my L. Chamberlayne the L. Haward *
on 5 Dec. 1574, and more precisely in the Chamber Order Book of Worcester
as ‘ Lord Chamberlayn m the absence of the E. of Sussex ' in Aug 1575
(Nichols, Eliz. i. 533).

* Nicolas, P, C. vi. ccxxi ; cf. p. 37.

42

THE COURT

Knollys from 1559 1570, Sir Christopher Hatton from 1577

to 1587, and Sir Thomas Heneage from 1589 to 1595. There
seem to have been vacancies from 1570 to 1577 and from
1595 1601, although Sir^vVilliam Pickering’s appointment

was under consideration in 1572 and Sir Henry Lee’s in 1597.
During Hunsdon’s illness there was much speculation as to
the probability of a Vice-Chamberlain being appointed. Sir
Walter Raleigh hoped for the post, but in February 1601 it
was given to Sir Johg Stanhope, afterwards Lord Stanhope
of Harrington, who kept it until 1616}

The Chamber was less divided up into semi-independent
working sections than the Lord Steward’s department,
although three of these, the Jewel House under a Master,
and the Wardrobe of Robes and the Removing Wardrobe of
Beds, each under a Yeoman, looked after the Queen’s plate
and jewels, her clothes, and the furniture of the Chamber
respectively.^ But there was an elaborate hierarchy of indi-
vidual officers and groups of officers, each with definite and
recognized functions to perform under the general super-
intendence of the Lord Chamberlain. The main basis of
grading goes back to the social organization of the Middle
Ages. In the fourteenth century every lay household officer
fell within one or other of five well-defined grades. He was
a knight banneret, a knight bachelor, an esquire {sctUifer^
armiger) or serjeant {serviens)^ a yeoman {valetttis)^ or a groom
{gar do). Pages and boys were later additions.^ Each grade
had its uniform rates of salary and allowances, and there was
regular promotion from one to another. And while some
officers of each grade were definitely assigned to special duties
{niestiers)^ others were more loosely attached either to the
Household as a whole or to the camera in particular. The
clerical officers were similarly arranged in grades distinct
from, but parallel to, those of the laymen. But between the
fourteenth century and the sixteenth a good many changes
had come about. The most important of these were due to
the early Tudors, who had not merely made a distinction
within the Chamber itself between the Privy Chamber and the
Outer or Presence Chamber and their respective staffs, but

* Dasent, vii. 3, 43 ; Wright, i. 355 ; La Mothe, v. 60 ; Sadleir Papers, ii.
368, 410; Sydney Papers, 11. 89, 198, 216 ; Chamberlain, 100 ; D.N.B,

* Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarii, i. 352, ‘ Portator lecti Regis in domo
comedet, Sc homini suo iii ob. & i summarium cum liberacione sua ' ;
cf. H, O. 39, 42, 251. These Wardrobes were distinct, alike from the Great
Wardrobe and from the standing Wardrobes, to which the furniture of
the permanently equipped palaces was committed (H, O. 262).

^ H, O. 39.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

43

had also, perhaps following a French model, brought into
existence two hybrid grades in the Gentlemen and Grooms of
the Privy Chamber.^ ‘ Gentlemyi ’ has the same significance

1 Carlisle, ii, assigns the institution of the Gentlemen to Henry VII,
but this is inconsistent with the official document of 1638 printed by
him (112), which definitely refers it to Henry VIII. He also gives from
Addl. MS. 5758, ff. 263^^, 269V, a list descnbed by him as of Gentlemen
of the Privy Chamber at the time of the King's ' French expedition, in
1513 But in the manuscript the list is simply headed ‘ The Kmges prevy
chamber ' ; it is part of an enumeration of ' the King’s Trayne to Bul-
loyne is not dated 1513, and probably belongs to 1544. Similarly a list
of Gentlemen, printed by Brewer, 11. 871, from Royal MS. 7, F. xiv. 100,
and dated by him 1516, proves on scrutiny to be certainly later than
1520, and may therefore be later still, while a number of alleged grants
to Gentlemen and Grooms of the IMvy Chamber between 1510 and 1514
(Brewer, i. 148, 195, 205, 280, 364, 748) may be seen by comparison with
other entries for some of the same personages (1. ii, 18, 91, 96, 113,
243, 410, 425, 448, 493, 600, 612) to be merely due to bad abstracting.
Evidently Brewer, when working upon his first volume, had not dis-
tinguished between a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and a Gentleman
Usher of the Chamber, or between a Groom of the Pnvy Chamber and
a Groom of the Chamber. The first clear example of Grooms and Pages
of the Pnvy Chamber which I have come across is in a military list of
June 1513 (Brewer, i. 634). Here there are no Gentlemen, but in Sept. 1518
a parallel list of French and English names (Brewer, 11. 1357) has a section
of Gentlemen of the Chamber, m which occur, besides French names,
those of Sir E. Nevell, Arthur Poole, Nicolas Carewe, Francis Brian,
Henry Noms, William Coffyn. I believe the categories of this list to be
French rather than English, In 1520 (Brewer, iii. 244) a Chamber list
gives the names of four squires for the body followed by ' William Cary
in the Privy Chamber ’, and in the same year a list of quarterly wages
due from the Treasurer of the Chamber (Brewer, iii. 408) has, besides
four Grooms of the Pnvy Chamber at 50s. each, ' Henry Norris and
William Caree of the privy chamber ' at {fi 6s. Srf. each. On the other
hand, a list of Chamber officers of 1526, probably just before the Eltham
Articles (Lord Steward's Misc. 299, f. 153), has still no Gentlemen, though
it has Grooms of the Privy (here called ' King's ') Chamber. As I read
these facts, the distinction between the Outer and the Pnvy Chamber was
made in Henry VII’s reign or early in Henry VIII's. The Grooms were
then divided into two classes. But the institution of the Gentlemen was
later and apparently upon a French model. At first, about 1520, one or
two Squires were personally assigned to attendance in the Privy Chamber.
Then the arrangement was regulated, and a defimte class of Gentlemen
of the Pnvy Chamber established, by the Eltham Articles in 1526. As
to status, the duties of the Gentlemen seem to have been in practice much
those of the Squires of Household in the Liber Niger (1478), which were
probably already exercised by Chaucer in the same capacity a century
before. * These Esquiers of houshold of old be accustumed, wynter and
somer, in aftyrnoones and in eveninges, to drawe to lordes chambres
within courte, there to kepe honest company aftyr theyre cunnynge, m
talkyng of cronycles of kings and of other polycyes, or in pypeyng, or
harpyng, syngyng, or other actes martialles, to help occupy the courte,
and accompany straungers, tyll the tyme require of departing ’ (H. O. 46) .
Stowe (Annates, 565), descnbing the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533,
calls the Gentlemen * Esquires of Honour '. Their precedence under

44

THE COURT

as ‘ Esquire *, but this particular group, whose members were
intended to be the personal companions of the Sovereign,
seems to have been an amalgamation of two groups belonging
to the earlier establishment, one squirely, the Esquires of the
Household, the other knightly, the Knights of the Body.
And if the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber were more nearly
knights than esquires, the Grooms of the Privy Chamber
were in like manner more nearly esquires than grooms or
even yeomen.^ Probably, however, they replaced an earlier
group of Yeomen of the Chamber. The duties of the Gentle-
men of the Privy Chamber, in addition to those of companion-
ship, seem to have consisted chiefly in dressing and undressing
the Sovereign. The Grooms attended to the orderliness of
the rooms, and were supervised, under the Chamberlain, by
officers holding a very ancient post, the hostiarii camerae or
Gentlemen Ushers.^ Obviously the normal staffing of the
Privy Chamber required some modification in the case of
a virgin queen, Elizabeth appears usually to have had no
more than two or three Gentlemen and from five to ten
Grooms, in place of the eighteen Gentlemen and fourteen
Grooms provided for in the fee lists, and to have supplemented
these by making feminine appointments in corresponding
grades. There were Ladies or Gentlewomen, some of the
Bedchamber and some of the Privy Chamber, and beneath
these Chamberers, who appear also to have been known as
‘ the Queen’s Women The First Lady of the Privy Chamber
acted as Mistress of the Robes, and she or another of the

Elizabeth was after that of the Esquires of the Body (Carlisle, 86). On
the other hand, some of the Gentlemen appointed in 1526 had been
Knights of the Body, and the office of Knight of the Body appears shortly
after to have become obsolete. Knights are included as chamber officers
in the Elizabethan fee lists, but I can find no evidence that any were in
fact appointed

‘ The Grooms were distinguished from the Gentlemen in the post-
Restoration court (Chamberlayne, 247) by not wearing sword, cloak, or
hat in the Chamber.

* Constitutio Domus Regis (c. 1135) in Heame, Liber Niger Scaccant,
i. 356, ‘ Hostianus Camerae unaquaque die, quo Rex iter agit, iiij*^ ad
lectum Regis ' ; cf. H. O. 37, and p. 37, supra. On the etiquette of
Bedchamber service, as inherited from the fifteenth century, cf. Fumivall,
Bahee*s Book, 175, 313.

* The feminine posts do not appear in the fee lists. Lansd, MS. lix,

43» gives (c. 1588) two ladies at 50 marks 6s. 8d.) and one at £20

as ‘ The Bed chamber *, five at 50 marks as ‘ Gentlewomen of y® privey
Chamber and four at £20 as ‘ Chamberers ’. The term ' The Queen's
Women ' appears in the list of liveries for Elizabeth's funeral. Beyond
these there were probably only a few women, e. g. a * lawndrys *, employed
at court ; cf. Cheyney, i. 18. In the New Year Gift lists the official women
are mixed up with wives of men officers and others in attendance at court.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 45

Ladies took charge of the jewels actually in use by the Queen
and accounted for them to the Jewel-house.^ In addition
there were the six Maids of Honour, who were not salaried
officers, but girls of good birth, for whom the court served
as a finishing school of manners, and who attended the Queen
in public, sat and walked with her in the Privy Chamber and
Privy Garden, and kept her entertained with the dancing
which she delighted to witness. They were generally dressed
in white, and were lodged in the Coffer Chamber under the
care of a lady called the Mother of the Maids.^ And they
learnt other things at the court besides manners. Gossip is
full of the troubles which Elizabeth underwent in the attempt
to establish the cult of Cynthia amongst the maids of honour
and the younger ladies of the Privy Chamber.^ A few older
ladies of rank, some of them relatives of the Queen, were also
assigned lodgings in court, and were apparently known as
Ladies of the Presence Chamber.^

The Outer Chamber was also supervised by Gentlemen
Ushers, some in daily, others in quarterly waiting, with
Grooms of the Chamber, headed by a Groom Porter, and
Pages of the Chamber under them to maintain the apart-
ments in order, Yeomen Ushers to keep the doors, and a
body of Messengers of the Chamber, ranking with the Yeo-
men, who besides their domestic uses were at the disposal of
the Privy Council and the Secretaries for political purposes,
and become very numerous by the end of the reign.^ The

* Katharine Astley seems to have been First Lady in 1562 (Nichols,
Eliz. i. 1 16), Katharine Howard, afterwards Lady Howard of Effingham,
from 1572-87 (Sloane MS. 814 ; Nichols, i. 294 ; li. 65, 251 ; Sp. P,
ii. 661), and Dorothy Lady Stafford in 1587 {Sp. P. iv. 14). But Mary
Ratcliffe had charge of the jewels from July 1587 to the end of Elizabeth's
reign (Nichols, iii. i, 445 ; Egerton Papers, 313 ; S. P. D. Jac. /, 1. 79 ;
Addl. MS. 5751, f. 222 ; Royal MS, Appendix, 68), apparently in succession
to Blanche Parry.

® For the white dresses, cf App. F ; Sydney Papers, 11. 170 ; S. P. D.
Eliz. cclxxxii. 48 (vol. iv, p. 114) ; L. Cust in Trans. Walpole Soc. iii. 12 ;
for the lodging in the Goffer Chamber, doubtless where the ‘ sweet coffers *
were kept, Sydney Papers, ii. 38. Elizabeth's predecessors, at least from
the reign of Edward II (Tout, 280 ; cf. H. 0 . 44), had maintained some
of the young lads who were royal wards at court under the name of
Henchmen, but on ii Dec. 1565 Francis Alen wrote to Lord Shrewsbury
(tx>dge, i. 438), * Her Highness hath of late, whereat some do much marvel,
dissolved the ancient office of the Henchmen '.

* This may be exemplified from the histories of Robert Dudley and
Mrs. Cavendish, of Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth 'Throgmorton, of Robert
T5rrwhitt and Bridget Manners, of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon,
of Essex and Elizabeth Brydges, Mary Howard, Elizabeth Russell and
Elizal^th Southwell, and of Pembroke and Mary Fitton.

* Nichols, Eliz. ii. 24 ; Sp. P. i. 45 ; ii. 675.

^ Philip Henslowe (ch. xi), George Bryan (ch. xv), and John Singer

THE COURT

46

Gentlemen Ushers also took part in the arrangements for
lodging the court during progresses, in co-operation with a
Knight Harbinger and four subordinate Harbingers who went
in advance as billeting officers.^ To the Outer Chamber,
moreover, belonged the Esquires of the Body, who slept in the
Presence Chamber, and took charge of the whole Chamber
after the ceremony known as the All Night at nine o’clock,
and a group of officers ‘ for the mouth ’, including Carvers,
Cupbearers, Sewers for the Queen, and Surveyors of the
Dresser.2 These had anciently been of importance, all ranking
as esquires, and the Carvers and Cupbearers from the fifteenth
century as knights.^ But their functions had dwindled, like
those of the Hall officers at an earlier date, when the Tudor
sovereigns ceased as a rule to dine even in the Presence
Chamber, and by the end of the reign the posts of Carver
and Cupbearer were claimed by great nobles as dignified
sinecures.^ The actual service of Elizabeth’s meals was done
by her ladies.^ Similarly the Sewers for the Chamber, who
apparently represent those of the Esquires of the Household
who did not become Gentlemen of the Chamber, had probably
neither duties nor salaries under Elizabeth.® It had long
proved convenient to the Crown to entertain a number of
nominal servants, who without giving actual attendance in
the household upon ordinary occasions, could be called upon
for the great ceremonies of state or for the household array
in times of battle, and at other times helped to increase the
royal prestige and to strengthen the royal hold upon the
localities in which they lived.*^ And naturally there were

(ch. xv) were Grooms, and Anthony Munday (ch. xxii) and possibly
Lawrence Dutton (ch. xv) Messengers of the Chamber.

‘ Cf. ch. iv. I doubt whether the Harbingers were originally Chamber
of&cers, but they seem to be so classed under Henry VIII {H. O. 169)
and in the Elizabethan fee lists.

* An order of 1493 ‘ for all night * is in H. O. 109 ; Pegge, li. 16, has
a long account of the same usage in the post- Restoration Household.
John Lyly (ch. xxiii) and Sir George Buck (ch. iii) were Esquires of the
Body. A brawl in 1598 between the Earl of Southampton and Ambrose
Willoughby, who was in charge of the Presence Chamber as Esquire of
the Body after the Queen had gone to bed, is recorded in Sydney Papers,
ii. 83.

* H, O. 33 (c, 1478), ‘ In the noble Edwardes [Ed. Ill] dayes worshipfull
esquires did this servyce, but now thus for the more worthy

^ At Elizabeth's funeral the Earl of Shrewsbury had a livery as Cup-
bearer and the Earl of Sussex as Carver.

» Cf. App. F.

® Philip Henslowe (ch. xi) became a Sewer of the Chamber.

’ Brewer, ii. 871 (assigned to 1516, but probably later than 1526). The
livery list for Elizabeth's coronation includes 7 Ladies of the Privy
Chamber ‘ without wages ' and 1 1 others ‘ extraordinary ', 4 ‘ ordinary '

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

47

many aspirants to the status and the protection which even
a nominal membership of the royal household afforded. Sur-
vivals, such as the Sewerships for the Chamber, were well
adapted to this purpose, but it was also possible to meet it
by appointing supernumerary members to effective groups.^
Elizabeth certainly made many ‘ extraordinary ’ as well as
‘ ordinary ’ appointments, especially of Esquires of the Body
and Grooms of the Chamber, and a status midway between
the ordinary and extraordinary Grooms seems to have been
assigned to the players belonging to companies under the
royal patronage.^ It may be that the ‘ extraordinary ’
appointments were sometimes of the nature of grants in
reversion, and that the holders looked forward to passing on
to ‘ ordinary ’ posts in due course.^

Duties in the Outer Chamber were also fulfilled by the
various bodies of royal guards. Of these there were three.
The oldest was constituted by the Serjeants-at-Arms, who
held the rank of Esquires, and were appointed by investment
with the collar of SS at the hands of the Sovereign on the
way to chapel."* They are little heard of under Elizabeth,
and their posts were probably to a large extent honorific.
The Yeomen of the Guard were a /oot-guard established by
Henry VII in 1485. The Yeomen Ushers of the Chamber
were selected from amongst them, and on their establishment
an older body of Yeomen of the Crown, itself in origin a guard
of archers, seems to have been allowed to lapse.^ The Yeomen
were the working palace guard, and were under a Captain,
a Standard Bearer, and a Clerk of the Cheque.® The Gentle-
men Pensioners or ‘ Spears ’ were a horse-guard established
by Henry VIII in 1509.'^ Both these Tudor guards seem to

Esquires of the Body, and 6 Gentlemen Waiters (1. e. of the Privy Chamber)
‘ unplaced ’ ; that for her funeral 16 Grooms of the Chamber ‘ in ordinarie '
and 23 ' extraordinary, but daily attendant 5 Pages of the Chamber ‘ in
ordinary ' and 3 ‘ extraordinary and a number of Esquires of the Body
and Sewers of the Chamber far in excess of anything contemplated by
the fee lists.

‘ Batiffol, 93, describes a similar practice in the French household.

* Cf. ch. xiii (Queen's, King’s).

® Philip Henslowe (ch. xi) seems to have passed from the ‘ extra-
ordinary ' to the ‘ ordinary ' status as Groom of the Chamber.

* Pegge, V. 49. There were ‘ xx servientes, unusquisque 3*^ in die ’ in
the Domus of Henry I (Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarti, 1. 356).

* Pegge, iii ; Tout, 304 (1318) : * Item xxiiij archers a pee, garde corps
le roi, qirrount deuaunt le roi en cheminant par pays ' ; H. O. 38 (1478).

* Sir Christopher Hatton was Captain of the Guard 1572-87, Sir Walter
Raleigh 1587-1603, Sir Thomas Erskine, afterwards Viscount Fenton
(1605) and Earl of Kelly (1619), 1603-32.

’ Halle, i. 14 ; ii. 294 ; Pegge, ii. An Elizabethan book of orders for
the Pensioners (i6oi) is in H, O, 276.

THE COURT

48

have been modelled on analogous French establishments.
The Pensioners had a Captain, a Lieutenant, a Standard
Bearer, and a Clerk of the^ Cheque. They were gentlemen
of good birth, and to them the Court looked for its supply of
accomplished tilters. They attended the Queen, bearing
gilded battle-axes, on her way to chapel, and in public pro-
cessions.^ By the sixteenth century the control of the guards
clearly fell within the sphere of the Lord Chamberlain. Both
the Hunsdons themselves acted as Captains of the Pensioners,
and the Captaincy of the Yeomen was sometimes, although
not always, attached to the Vice-Chamberlainship.

The Secretaries, with the Clerks of the Signet and Privy
Council, the Master of the Posts, and the Masters of Requests,
although they had grown out of the Chamber, and were still,
like the Lords Treasurer, Chancellor, Admiral, and Privy
Seal, lodged in the Household, cannot at this period be
regarded as under the Lord Chamberlain.^ But he had some
responsibility for the royal Chaplains, the Chapel, the Vestry,
and the Clerks of the Closet, whence the Queen heard prayers,
especially after Elizabeth suppressed the Deanship of the
Chapel.^ And he controlled the physicians, surgeons, and
apothecaries, the astronomer, the serjeant-painter, the sur-
veyor of ways, the various hunting equipages, the rat-taker
and mole- taker, and a number of artificers ministering to the
diverse needs of the Queen and the palace. Probably he
controlled the royal fools and other survivals of that charac-
teristic mediaeval interest in mental and physical abnor-
mality.^ And, what is more to our purpose, he certainly
controlled the players, and the extensive establishment of
musicians. Amongst these the old royal ministralli or

> Cf. App. F.

* On the development of the Secretaries, cf. Tout, 175 ; Davies, 228 ;
Nicolas, P. C. vi, xcvii ; Cheyney, i. 43 ; R. H. Gretton, The King*s
Government, 25 ; L. H. Dibben, Secretaries in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Centuries (E. H, R, xxv. 430).

® On the Chapel, cf. ch. xii, s.v.

^ Payments’ on account of Robert Grene, a court fool, appear in the
Privy Purse Accounts for 1559-69 (Nichols, i. 264). Apparently the post
was hereditary ; a warrant of 1567 for the clothes of ' Jack Grene our
foole ' IS in Addl. MS. 35328. C. C. Stopes, Elizabeth's Fools and Dwarfs
(Shakespeare' s Environment, 269), adds from a Wardrobe book of 1 577-1600
(Lord Chamb. Books, v. 36) ‘ Thomasina ', a dwarf or muliercula, and from
another (Lord Chamb. Books, v. 34) ' The Foole * William Shenton our
Foole ’, ‘ Ipolyta the Tartarian ‘ an Italian named Monarcho ‘ a lytle
Blackamore ’. References to Monarcho, including L. L. L. iv. i. loi, are
collected in Var. iv. 345, and McKerrow. Nashe, iv. 339. Dee, 7,
records a visit from the Queen's dwarf ‘ Thomasin ’ on 7 June
1580.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 49

histriones of the Middle Ages, with their marescallus, were
still represented by a body of trumpeters under a serjeant.^
But the personal taste of Henry 1 1 for music had brought
a stream of new performers to court, and this had continued
under Elizabeth. Many of them were of foreign extraction,
and certain families, such as the Laniers, the Ferrabosci, the
Bassani of Venice, or rather, as their name denotes, of Bassano
in the Veneto, the Lupi of Milan, formed little dynasties of
their own at court, father, son, and grandson succeeding each
other, in the royal service through the best part of a century.
At the end of her reign Elizabeth was entertaining at least
seven distinct bodies of musicians, whose members numbered
in all between sixty and seventy. For wind instruments there
were, besides the trumpeters, the recorders, the flutes, and
the hautboys and sackbuts ; for string instruments the viols
or violins and the lutes. There were also an organist attached
to the chapel and possibly players on the virginals.* The
most important of these were the lutenists, who sang as well
as played, and often composed their own songs, and appear to
have been of higher standing than the mere instrumentalists.
One of them was specially designated as the Lute of the
Privy Chamber.^ It seems probable that some of the super-
fluous Sewerships for the Chamber were conferred on them,
and Alfonso Ferrabosco may have been about 1575 a Groom
of the Chamber.'*

Finally, there were a number of offices, called in Elizabethan
parlance ‘ standing offices each under a Master or other
head of its own, which can only be regarded as on the border-
line of the Household. These were the Great Wardrobe, the
Revels, the Tents, the Toils, the Works, the Armoury,
the Ordnance, and the Mint. They were financed separately
from the Household, and had their various head-quarters
in London away from the palace. But their officers were

' Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 50.

* Lafontftine, 45, Numerous records of the musical establishment are
collected by Lafontaine from the Lord Chamberlain* s Records, and by
W. Nagel, AnnaXen der englischen Hopnustk (Beilage zu den Monatsheften
fiir Musikgeschichts, Bd. 26), and more completely in the Musical Antiquary
(Oct. 1909-Apr. 1913) from the T, C. Accounts. The fee lists are not to
be relied upon,

® This was Mathias Mason. The lutenists also include Robert Hales
(1586-1603), Henry Porter (1603), also described in the same year as
a sackbut, and Philip Rosseter (1604-23), on whom cf. ch. xv.

* John Heywood certainly a Sewer of the chamber to Henry VIII
(cf. ch. xii, s.v. Paul’s), and Edward VI had a group of singers holding
these posts (Lafontaine, 9). but there is no definite evidence of a similar
arrangement under Elizabeth. On Alfonso Ferrabosco, cf. ch. xiv
(Italians).

3339*1

E

50

THE COURT

regarded as members of the Household, and although largely
independent, they were in many or all cases subject to some
kind of supervision by the Lord Chamberlain.^ Probably the
explanation of their origin is given by a phrase used about
1478 by the writer of the Liber Niger, Here the Wardrobe
is spoken of as ‘ an office of chaumbre outward In these
standing offices, and also in the Secretariat, we seem to have
examples of that budding off from the main administrative
organization by which those great departments of state, the
Exchequer and the Chancery, had already come into existence.
Doubtless the process was facilitated, when considerations of
practical convenience and a desire to reduce the number
of mouths to be provided for in the palace led to the location
of particular branches of work in permanent and independent
premises. The history of the Revels Office, which will form
the subject of another chapter, well serves to illustrate the
kind of development involved.^

Members of the standing offices were generally appointed
for life , those of the regular Household during the royal
pleasure. The former received letters patent ; the latter
were only sworn in before one or other of the chief officers,
and as most of the early records of the Lord Chamberlain’s
department have perished, no complete list of them is upon
record. The uniform rates of pay and allowances for each
grade of officer which prevailed in the fourteenth century
had undergone many complications by the middle of the
sixteenth. Each officer had, of course, his fee or wages,
payable either at the Exchequer or by the Treasurer of the
Chamber, whose functions will shortly be described, or, as in
the case of most of the regular officers of Household and
Chamber, by the Cofferer of the Household. The rates had
gradually increased, perhaps with a decrease in the purchasing
power of money. Those for the recently established Tudor
posts were reckoned in pounds ; the older ones in marks.
Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber and Pensioners got
Esquires of the Body £33 6s, 8d, (fifty marks). Gentlemen
Ushers of the Privy Chamber £30, Grooms of the Privy
Chamber £20, Grooms of the Chamber £2 13s, ^d, (four marks).
These may serve for examples. Obsolete mediaeval rates of

‘ On the relation of the Lord Chamberlain to the Revels in particular,
cf. ch. iii. The issues from the Great Wardrobe were mainly upon his
warrants.

* H. O. 37. The post of Clerk of Works is also called an * office out-
ward ’ {H. O. 54).

5 Cf. ch. iii, especially Tilney's list of * standing offices ' c, 1607. The
* maisters of the standing offices * also appear in the description of James's
coronation (Nichols, James, i. 325).

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 51

so many pence a day still survived here and there.^ The
Grooms and Pages of the Chamber had also a traditional
‘ great reward ’ of £100 among them at Christmas, while the
fees payable to the officers of the Chamber by lay and
ecclesiastic homagers were not — and are not yet — extinct.^
Exceptional ‘ rewards *, from foreign visitors of rank and so
forth, were naturally forthcoming from time to time, and, as
naturally, largesse often became indistinguishable from bribe.
The allowances, other than salary, were of several kinds.
Firstly, there was diet, that is to say, dinner and supper at
the appointed tables in hall or chamber. Most of the officers
of the regular Household enjoyed this ; a few, whose atten-
dance was not required daily or at all times in the day,
received instead a money allowance from the Cofferer known
as ‘ board wages Secondly, there was ‘ bouche of court ’,
a commons of bread and ale, candles and fuel, served only
to those of sufficient rank to be lodged in the palace itself.^
It is probably an evidence, not of economy, but of change
of social habits, that in the sixteenth century ale had replaced
the wine of the fourteenth. Originally the ‘ bouche of court ’
had to suffice for breakfast, but under Elizabeth the Maids
of Honour and a few other favoured groups were allowed
to share the queen’s breakfast of beef.® Thirdly, there
was ‘ livery ’ in the narrow sense, clothes or the material
for clothes from the Great Wardrobe, or a money payment
in lieu thereof. Even in the fourteenth century there was
already much commutation of livery, which in the case of
yeomen and grooms also included an allowance for shoes,
known as calciatura. By the end of the fifteenth century it
was definitely thought derogatory for men of rank to wear
even the sovereign’s livery, except in some quite symbolical
form.® Under Elizabeth some of the salaries seem to have

* Thus the curious fee of £11 8s. lid. a year represents jid. a day,
the regular wages of esquires, serjeants, and many clerks under Edward II
(Tout, 270).

* The £100 was ' from the King’s privy coffers ’ c. 1478 {H. O. 41), but
by 1 508 it was from the Exchequer (Henry, Hist, of Great Britain, xii. 454),
and here it was still paid in the seventeenth century (Sullivan, 252, from
Pells Order Books).

® Nichols, Eltz. li. 47, from return of Board of Green Cloth (1576).

* Nichols, Ehz. ii. 45, 51. ‘ Bouche ’ or ' bouge ’ of court is clearly

from busca, bush, firewood. The allowance was as old as 1290, for Fleta,
li. 7, notes ctbus, potus, busca, and candela amongst the Chamberlain's
fees (cf. p 37). It is set out for each officer in 1318 (Tout, 270) and
c. 1478 (H. O. 15).

® Nichols, EUz. ii. 44.

* H. O. 34, ' because ray clothinge is not according for the king's knightes,
therefore it was left ' But an order of June 1478 {T. R, Misc, 206, f. ii)

52

THE COURT

had livery allowances added on to them. The process of
commutation can still be traced. But liveries were issued
in kind to the yeomen, messengers, grooms, pages, and
stable footmen. These seem to have been of two kinds ;
‘ watching * liveries issued from the Wardrobe in the winter,
and ‘ summer * liveries, for which payment was made direct
from the Exchequer.^ The latter were gorgeous and costly,
of scarlet cloth, with spangles and embroidery of Venice gold,
taking the shape of a rose and crown and the letters ‘ E. R.’,
with some distinction between yeomen and grooms. The
present costume of the Yeomen of the Guard, or ‘ beef-eaters \
is a later modification of this livery.^ In their capacity as
Grooms of the Chamber the royal players were entitled to
wear the Queen’s ‘ coat The oflficers of the standing offices
had livery or livery allowance, if it was appropriate to their
rank. They did not have diet or ‘ bouche of court ’. But
they were in some cases entitled to supplement their fees by
charging ‘ wages ’ for actual days of service in the accounts
which their Masters annually rendered to the Exchequer.**

‘ Extraordinary ’ officers probably got no salaries or allow-
ances of any kind, unless they were called up for special
duty. But it must be added that all royal servants, whatever
their office, and whether ‘ ordinary ’ or ‘ extraordinary *,
received a customary allowance of red cloth at the coronation
and of black cloth at a royal funeral, and that the schedules
of recipients on these occasions form the most complete
establishment lists available.

The accession of James did not materially alter the general
structure of the Household. The chief changes were in the
Privy Chamber. The Wardrobe of Robes was placed under
a Gentleman, afterwards called a Master. The Gentlemen of
the Privy Chamber were increased in number, reduced to
quarterly terms of waiting, and deprived of salary.® The
salaries of the Lord Chamberlain, Gentlemen Ushers, and

required Lords, Knights, Squires of the Body, and others within the
household to wear ‘ a colour of the kings livery about their nekkes *

* Cheyney, i. 32 ; Devon, 24, 43, 67, 83 ; Abstract, 8 ; Pegge, iii. 27 ;
Nichols, James, ii. 125 ; V. P. vii. 12 ; Hentzner, Itinerarium (quoted
App. F) ; Addl. MS. 5750 » J Lord Chamberlain’s Records, v. 90 91

The ‘ watchyng clothing ' is as old as Edward IV (H. O. 38, 41). It s^ms
to have been 4 yards of medley colour at 5s. a yard (Sullivan, 253). The
sovereigns seem to have made some use of personal colours as distinct
from the royal scarlet. Those of Edward VI were green and white (Von
Raumer, ii. 71) ; those of Elizabeth black and white , cf. pp. 142 161
(1559, 1560, 1564). ’ ’

' Pegge, iii. 92. a Cf. ch. xiii (Queen’s).

‘ Carlisle, 90, with a list of many of James’s Gentlemen,

* Cf. ch. iii.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

53

Grooms were raised. And what was practically a new depart-
ment was brought into existence in the Bedchamber, which
had a staff of Gentlemen, Groojns, and Pages, independent
of the Lord Chamberlain and controlled by their own First
Gentleman, who was also known as Groom of the Stole.^
The Bed Chamber, chiefly composed of Scots, furnished James
with his most confidential servants.^ As might be expected,
James enlarged his hunting establishment, and one of his
new appointments was a Cockmaster.® He had a conspicuous
Fool in Archie Armstrong.^ And he instituted in the Lord
Chamberlain’s department an officer known as the Master of
the Ceremonies, whose function was to look after the lodgings
and the general well-being of ambassadors, and to grapple
with the knotty problems. entailed by their inveterate stickling
for precedence and etiquette.^ A separate household was
formed for the Queen, to which the various grades of ladies

‘ The order of 1526 for the Gentlemen of the Pnvy Chamber prescribes
that one of them, Henry Norris, ‘ shall be in the roome of Sir William
Compton, not only giveing his attendance as groome of the Kings stoole,
but also in his bed-chamber, and other pnvy places, as shall stand with
his pleasure ’ (H. O. 156). Naturally the post had lapsed dunng female
reigns, although a hope of Sir Robert Sidney for a ‘ Bedchamber lordship '
in 1597 suggests that a renewal may have been contemplated (Hatfield MSS,
vii. 225). James had had Gentlemen of the Bed Chamber m Scotland.
Later court usage, represented already by Chamberlayne, 262, in 1669,
interpreted ‘ stole * as ‘ vestment ', but I suspect that in ongin it was
the close stool, which was kept c. 1478 by the Wardrobe of Beds (H. O.
40) ; cf. Marston, Fawn, i. li. 46, * Thou art pnvate with the duke ; thou
belongest to his close-stool

2 Goodman, i. 389, says that the prime gentleman of the bed chamber
and groom of the stole was ‘ a man of special trust ' and had a table for
guests ‘ employed in the king's most private occasions Viscount Fenton
combined the post with that of Captain of the Guard under James.
According to Newcastle, 213, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke laboured
in vain to be of the Bed Chamber throughout the reign. Carey, Memoirs,
79» 91 » describes the heart-burmngs to which the office gave nse. Robert
CajT, afterwards Earl of Somerset, began his career as a Page of the Bed
Chamber (Nichols, James, i. 600).

* 5. P. D. Jac. I (8 Nov. 1604). The French ambassador wrote in 1606
(Boderie, i. 56) that the king ‘ vit combattre les cocqs, qui est un plaisir
qu'il prend deux fois la semaine

* Cf. D, N. B,. Anne also had a 'jester', Thomas Derry, in 1612
(Cunningham, xliii).

® Abstract, 46 ; Devon, 17, 72 and passim ; Cott. MS. Vesp. C. xiv,
f. 108 ; Addl. MS. 33378, f. 34^ ; V. P. x. 102 ; Sully, 443 ; Boderie,
i. 39, 272, 362. Sir Lewis Lewknor received a formal appointment as
Master of Ceremonies by patent, with a salary of £200, on 7 Nov. 1605,
but had in fact been exercising the functions since 1603. Amongst his
assistants were Sir William Button, who was employed by 1607 and
obtamed a reversion of the post on lo Sept. 1612, and John Finett, who
ultimately himself became Master, and pubhsbed a record of his service
from 1612 in his Phtloxents (1656).

54

THE COURT

found at Elizabeth’s court were transferred.^ There were
minor households for the royal children. That of Henry was
much enlarged when he was^ created Prince of Wales in i6io,
and in many respects, especially on the literary and artistic
side, came to rival his father’s.

One other officer, whose name has already been mentioned,
must now, in virtue of his special relation to the playing
companies, be fully considered. This is the Treasurer of the
Chamber. His history affords an admirable example of that
capacity of duplicating the functions of the departments of
state, which was inherent in the Household as the successor
in a direct line of the undifferentiated curia regis. After the
development of the Exchequer was completed in the course
of the twelfth century, the great bulk of the royal revenue
was dealt with by that organization, and payments into and
out of the royal account were made through the clerks of
the branch known as the Receipt of the Exchequer. The
posts of camerarius and tkesaurarius were now distinct. But
the change was never quite exhaustively carried out. Pre-
sumably the sovereign found it convenient to retain a certain
residue of his funds under his personal control. Side by side
with the Exchequer and its great officer it is still possible
to trace into the thirteenth century a thesaurus camerae regis
and a tkesaurarius camerae ; and the Pipe Rolls continue to
refer to payments made in camera curiae^ or ipsi regi in
camera curiae^ and to receipts taken by debtors de camera
curiae^ both of which were certified to the Exchequer per
breve regis and put on final record there.^ There were also
clerici camerae^ who probably wrote these brevia, and it is
conjectured that the privy seal, as distinct from the great

* Worcester to Shrewsbury, 2 Feb. 1604 (Lodge, 111. 88) : ‘ Now, having
done with matters of state, I must a little touch the femimne common-
wealth, that against your coming you be not altogether like an ignorant
country fellow. First, you must know we have ladies of divers degrees
of favour ; some for the private chamber, some for the drawing chamber,
some for the bed-chamber, and some for neither certain, and of this
number is only my Lady Arabella and my wife. My Lady Bedford holdeth
fast to the bed-chamber ; my Lady Harford would fain, but her husband
hath called her home. My Lady Derby the younger, the Lady Suffolk,
Ritche, Nottingham, Susan, Walsingham, and, of late, the Lady Sothwell,
for the drawing-chamber ; all the rest for the private-chamber, when they
are not shut out, for many times the doors are locked ; but the plotting
and malice amongst them is such, that I think envy hath tied an invisible
snake about most of their necks to sting one another to death. For the
present there are now five maids ; Cary, Myddelmore, Woodhouse, Gar-
grave, Roper ; the sixth is determined, but not come ; God send them
good fortune, for as yet they have no mother.'

* Madox, i. 262 ; Thomas, 24 ; Tout in £. H, R, xxiv. 496.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 55

seal of Chancery, came into existence as a means of authen-
ticating the brevia as impressed with royal authority. Thus
the camera was able to duplicate tjie functions of the Chancery
as well as those of the Exchequer.^ About the middle of the
thirteenth century the Pipe Rolls take to referring to the
exceptional financial transactions as taking place not in
the camera but in the garderoba. There are clerici garderobae
and a chief officer called indifferently the custos and the
thesaurarius garderobae.^ Presumably the garderoba or ‘ ward-
robe ’ was at first merely that apartment of the camera in
which the financial work was done, and there are still indica-
tions of some such early relationship in the position of the
Wardrobe when we first get a clear view of the operations
at the very end of the century.^ But by this time its scope
had greatly increased, owing to the policy of Henry HI and
Edward I, who found in it a financial and administrative
instrument, both more ready to hand and less subject to
baronial control and criticism than either the Exchequer or
the Chancery. Much of the revenue had come to pass through
its hands, under a system of tallies, which were issued to it
in block by the Exchequer on the authority of a royal warrant
dormant, exchanged for incomings with accountants, and
ultimately presented as vouchers at the Exchequer of Account.
As part of the same process, the clerical head of the Wardrobe
had acquired an importance almost equal to that of the
Chamberlain. Indeed, so far as he was controlled by any
lay officer, it was less the Chamberlain than the Steward,
under whom he sat at the daily review of household expendi-
ture which formed a feature of the Wardrobe system, and
was continued into Tudor times by the Board of Green Cloth.
Here also sat a consocins of the Treasurer, the contrarotulator^
who kept duplicates of his accounts as a check upon him,
and had the charge of the privy seal. The Wardrobe held
not only the money and jewels of the King, but also his
‘ secrets *. Its officers were his secretarii in the earlier un-
specialized sense, his confidential agents, both in finance and
in diplomacy and other affairs of state. The extant account-
books show that it not merely defrayed the expenses of his
household, his alms, and his amusements, but also those

‘ Tout, 63.

* Madox,* i. 267 ; P. R. 0 . Lists and Indexes, xi. loz ; Tout in E. H. R.
xxiv. 496. The following summary of the history of the wardrobe and
chamber in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is largely
based on Tout, The Place of Edward II in English History (1914). Addi-
tional material has since been published in J. C. Davies, The Baronial
Opposition to Edward II (1918).

* Fleta, ii. 6 , quoted on p. 37.

THE COURT

56

entailed by the fortification and victualling of his castles, and
the wages and equipment of his army and navy and his
ambassadors and other nunt^d.

During the reign of Edward II the power of the Wardrobe
was broken up, partly by the direct action of baronial
hostility, partly by a discreet process of reorganization within
the household, in the face of baronial criticism. The responsi-
bilities of the Treasurer and Comptroller were limited to the
purely domestic expenditure of the Steward’s department,
much as we find them in Tudor times. The charge of the
privy seal was dissociated from the Comptrollership ; its use,
like that of the great seal before it, was subjected to regula-
tion in the baronial interest ; and it soon became superfluous.
Offices, such as the Great Wardrobe for the purveyance of
cloth, furs, and other bulky commodities, which had recently
come into existence as branches of the Wardrobe, were now
placed on an independent footing, and began to account
direct to the Exchequer. And now once more, after remaining
in obscurity for the best part of a century, emerges into
renewed activity the financial organization of the Chamber.
To it appears to have been assigned, as part of the scheme
of reform, such expenditure as could not with propriety be
withdrawn from the personal supervision of the sovereign.^
With this as a nucleus, it was not particularly difficult to
convert the Chamber into just such a financial and adminis-
trative organ as the Wardrobe had been before it. The funds
at its disposal were gradually increased, as opportunities
offered themselves of adding to them the revenues of one
escheated manor after another. Its clerks in turn became
the secretariif out of whom the royal Secretaries in the Tudor
sense were in course of time developed. Even the lost privy
seal proved capable of replacement by a series of other small
seals, the ‘ secret ’ seal under Edward II, the ‘ griffin ’ seal
under Edward III, and finally the ‘ signet ’, which remained
to the end in the hands of the Secretaries. It was only up
to a point that the trained bureaucrats, with the power of
knowledge behind them, proved amenable to baronial control.
It is probably only up to a point that they will prove amenable
to democratic control.

The actual use made of the Chamber varied considerably

> J. C. Davies, The First Journal of Edward ITs Chamber (1915, £. H.
XXX. 662), gives extracts from a Chamber account of 1322-3, including
a payment of 7 Jan. 1323 ‘ a iiij clers de Sneyth luantz cntreludies en la
sale de Couwyk deuant le Roi et monsire Hugh [le Despenser] de doun
le Roi par les mayns Harsik liuerant a eux les deniers xl**, which adds
an interesting early use of the term ‘ interlude * to those given in Mediaeval
Stage, 11. 181, 256.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 57

in different reigns. It flourished at the end of the reign
of Edward II, and again during the first half of that of
Edward III. Soon after the middle of the fourteenth century,
it lost much of its political status, owing to the separation
from it of the Secretaries, who now had their own clerks in
the Signet Office, and on the financial side it was for long
little more than a privy purse in strict subordination to the
Exchequer. It was still, however, capable at need of serving
as a medium of war expenditure, and with the appointment
of Thomas Vaughan by Edward IV in 1465 its financial
importance began to revive.^ Up to the end of the fourteenth
century, its financial officers are generally called Receivers of
the Chamber; during the next the double title of Treasurer
of the Chamber and Keeper of the King’s Jewels establishes
itself.^ They are sometimes, although perhaps not always,
appointed by patent, and at any rate from the time of
Henry IV are only accountable to the King in person.^ On
the execution of Vaughan in 1483 the posts of Treasurer of
the Chamber and Keeper of the Jewels were divided ; and
it may serve as an illustration of the conservatism of courts
that this was still a subject of grievance in the Jewel House
two hundred years later.^

At the beginning of Henry VII’s reign the functions of
Treasurer of the Chamber were discharged by Thomas, after-
wards Sir Thomas, Lovell.^ On his appointment as Treasurer

‘ Newton, 351 ; Ramsay, Lancaster and York, 1 317 , 11 466. Henry
VlII's Treasurers of the Chamber sometimes kept separate war accounts
(Brewer, iv. i. 82), and there is a similar example as late as 1599 (i?. O.
Audit Office, Various, 3, 108).

^ P. P. O. Lists and Indexes, xxxv. 220, and Cal. Patent Rolls, both
passim.

^ C. P. R , J Hen. VI, p, 3, m. 5 (3 May 1423), 5 Edw. IV, p. 2, m. 28
(29 June 1465), I Rich. Ill, p. 5, m. 21 (26 Apr. 1484). I think Newton
is wrong 111 regarding Vaughan's appointment by patent as exceptional.
The Liber Niger, c. 1478 (H. O. 42), fully describes the Jewel House, with
Its ‘ architectour, called clerk of the King s, or keeper of the King’s jewelles,
or tresorci of the chambyr ’, and says ‘ all thinges of this ollice inward
or outward,* commyth and goyth by the knowledge of the Kyng, and his
chamberlaynes recorde

* Sir Gilbert Talbot, Master of the Jewel House in 1680, represented
(Archaeologia, xxii. 118) that anciently the Master was Treasurer of the
Chamber, ' till that branch was taken out and made an office apart , and
is now five times more beneficiall than the Jewell-House , all the regula-
tion of expence being apply'd to the remaining parts of the perquisites
of the Jewell- House, the fees of the Treasurer of the Chamber and Master
of the Ceremonys being left entire

® Campbell, i. 228, 316; 11. 105, 296, 320, 445. Newton, 351. 353,
thinks the exact dates of Edmund Chaderton's and Lovell's appointments
uncertain, and supposes the keepership of the jewels to have been detached
on the latter occasion. But it was clearly on the former, the date of

58

THE COURT

of the Household in August 1592, he was succeeded by John,
afterwards Sir John, Heron, who had in fact acted as his
assistant and kept his bookstfrom 1487.^ Under the Tudors,
with their general tendency to elaborate the personal control
of government by the sovereign, the post remained one of
first-class importance. It was regulated in 1511 by a statute,
the recital of which sets out that it had been the practice
for certain Receivers of royal lands to account before persons
appointed by Henry VII ‘ for the more speedy payment of
his revenues and the accounts of the same to be more speedily
taken than could have been after the course of the Exchequer *,
and after accounting to pay sums to the use of the King in
his chamber.^ The record of these transactions, signed by the
King or ‘ his trusty servant John Heron ’ had been no legal
discharge to the accountants in the Exchequer. Henry VIII
had set up by patent a body of General Surveyors and
Approvers of the King’s Lands to take the accounts, and the
statute confirms this proceeding and appoints John Heron
to be Treasurer of the Chamber, and to be answerable, with
his successors, direct to the King, and not to the Exchequer.^
John Heron continued in office until 1521.^ His successor

which is given in C. P. R., i Rich, III, p. 5, m. 21, as 26 Apr. 1484.
Lovell is described as Treasurer of the King's Chamber on 26 Feb. i486
and of the Queen's Chamber about the following Easter (Campbell, i. 228,
316). There is no patent for him, and my impression is that both posts
had been annexed to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, granted him
on 12 Oct. 1485 (C. P. R,, 1 Hen. VII, p. i, m. 18).

‘ Newton, 354, with a full account of Heron’s career.

* This arrangement had already been legalized by / Hen. VIII, c. 3
(Statutes, ill. 2), which authorizes the payment of certain revenues to
Heron as General Receiver, ‘ and to other persons . . . hereafter in like
office to be deputed and assigned as in the time of the late . . . King
Henry the vij^*' hath been used ’, but does not refer to him as Treasurer
of the Chamber,

® 3 Hen, VIII, c. 23 (Statutes, lii. 45). It is provided by § 6 ' that the
Kinges forenamed trusty servant John Heron be from hensfurth Tresourer
of the Kinges Chamber, and that he by the name of Tresourer of the
Kinges Chambre be named accepted and called ; and that he and every
other persone whom the King hereaftur shall name and appoint to the
said roome or office of Tresourer of his Chamber be not Charged no
chargeable for any suche his or their Receipt of any parte or parcell of
the premisses as before ys expressed or therefor to accompte answere or
make repayment to any persone or persones other then to the King or his
heires in his or their Chamber, and not in the said Eschequier *. The
Act only had force to 30 Nov. 1512, but it was continued by 4 Hen, VIII,
c. 18, 6 Hen, VIII, c. 24, 7 Hen. VIII, c. 7. 14-15 Hen. VIII, c. 15, and
made permanent by 27 Hen. VIII, c. 62 in 1535 (Statutes, iii. 68, 145,
182, 219, 631). The account of this legislation in Newton, 361, treats
the Act of 6 Hen, VIII as its starting-point.

* His salary was at first £10, afterwards £23 a quarter (Brewer, iii. 407).
He died on 10 June 1522 (Newton, 358).

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

59

was John Miklowe, who had been Comptroller of the House-
hold.^ But Miklowe’s tenure of office must have been short,
for in 1523 a statute, passed in rapewal of that of 1511, names
as Treasurer Sir Henry Wyatt, who was the father of the
poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt.^ In 1526 Wyatt was placed on
the Privy Council^; and on 13 April 1528 he was succeeded
as Treasurer by Sir Brian Tuke, who held office until 1545.^
In 1541 a new statute was passed which erected the Surveyors
ot the King’s Lands into a court of record, appointed the
Treasurer of the Chamber as Treasurer of the Court, and
required him to account before the Court or such other
persons as the King might appoint, both in this capacity and
also for ‘ all and every the receytes issues profyttes dettes
and thinges concernyng his office of Treasurership of the
Kinges Chamber Tuke was succeeded on 25 November
1545 by Sir Anthony Rous, to whom one John Dawes acted
as deputy ® ; and Rous on 19 February 1546, by Sir William
Cavendish, to the disappointment of Stephen Vaughan,
Henry’s financial agent at Antwerp, who had hoped for the
post. Cavendish also had the assistance of a deputy, Robert
Oliver.’ During Cavendish’s tenure of office, two further
changes in the position of the Treasurership took place.
A patent of 1547, subsequently confirmed by statute under

' A letter in Brewer, iii. 781 (n,d. but dated by Brewer z Dec. 1521),
speaks of ‘ Master Myclo the new treasurer in Master Heron is room \
Certain payments were made by John Myklowe, ' late treasurer of the
King’s chamber from 1 June 1521 to i May 1522, and thereafter by
Edmund Peckham (Brewer, m 1156), until i Jan. 1523. Conceivably
Peckham, who had been a clerk in the counting-house, and was cofferer
by 1524 (Brewer, iv. 422), may have been Treasurer for a short period
between Miklowe and Wyatt, unless indeed these payments belong to
a special war loan or subsidy account, such as Wyatt himself rendered
in 1524 (Brewer, iv. 82), probably not strictly in his capacity as Treasurer
of the Chamber. Miklowe is described as Treasurer on 10 Apr. 1522 and
was dead by 28 June 1522 (Brewer, iii, 924, 998). For his earlier history,
cf. Brewer, ii. 436 ; iii. 332 ; xxi. 2. 426 ; Ellis, iii. 3, 271.

* Wyatt is descnbed as Treasurer in an indenture of i8 Feb. 1523
(Brewer, iii. 1190)- In one of Cavendish's memoranda as printed in
Trevelyan Papers, ii. 12, the name of Sir Thomeis has been substituted
for that of Sir Henry as a predecessor of Cavendish. This is an error,
or more probably a forgery, as Collier edited the volume, and called special
attention to the entry. Sir Thomas Wyatt was riding in 1524 on war
loan business, payment for which is in his father's account (Brewer, iv. 85).
On 21 Oct. 1524 he became clerk of the jewels. It is just possible that
the old connexion of the Treasurer with the Jewel House suggested the
confusion, on which cf. Simonds, Sir Thomas Wyatt, 19.

* H, 0 . 159. * Brewer, iv. 1843.

® 33 Hen. VIII, c. 39 (S/a<u/«5, iii. 879).

* Brewer, xx, 2. 452 ; Dasent, i. 323, 470.

’ Brewer, xxi. i. 125, 147 ; Trevelyan Papers, i. 197.

6o

THE COURT

Edward VI in 1553, dissolved alike the Court of Surveyors
and the analogous Court of Augmentations, created to deal
with the revenues of surre^.dered religious houses in 1535,
and established in place of these a combined Court of Aug-
mentation and Revenues of the King’s Crown, of which the
Treasurer of the Chamber was to continue to act as Treasurer.^
Hardly, however, had this readjustment received legislative
sanction, when it was upset again. A patent of I 554 , under
the authority of an Act of Mary’s first Parliament, suppressed
the Court of Augmentation, by annexing its business to the
Exchequer, and directed the revenues to be paid into the Ex-
chequer and accounts to be audited there, as before the Court
was set up.^ Cavendish did not find the Treasurership a
bed of roses. On Tuke’s death it was anticipated that his
successor would receive a legacy of official debts.® A book
containing copies of ‘ certificates ’ or reports made by Caven-
dish to the Privy Council show that he soon had occasion to
be perturbed.^ About Lady Day 1546 he represented that
his receipts had been dislocated to the extent of about
£14,000, and that in view of his liabilities, which he detailed,
there was urgent need to consider the state of the office.
In another paper he called attention to the enormous number
of securities for old debts to the Crown, some of them dating
from the time of Plenry VII, with which he found from Tuke’s
books that he was charged ; and, as * a yonge officer not
long exercised in the same prayed that these might be
reviewed, and a decision arrived at as to how much of the
total nominal amount of £322,980 covered by them stood for
‘ sperat ’ and how much for ‘ desperat ’ debts. The book also
contains summaries of his liabilities during 1547, the end
of 1548, when he declared that he had debts of £14,000 and
no ready money in the office, and finally at Lady Day 1554.
This last item does not disclose how far his revenue had in
the interval been made sufficient for his needs. It is possible
that it had been made more than sufficient, for on 17 August
1556 the Privy Council called upon him to appear before them
with ‘ Cade his clerc ’, and on 9 October 1557 they returned
his book of account, stating that he owed £5,237 55. o\d. and

‘ 7 Edw\ Vlf c. 2 (Statutes, iv. i, 164).

- I Mary, Sess. 2, c. 10 (Statutes, iv. i, 208) ; Thomas, 15.

Wnothesley to Paget in Brewer, xx. 2. 338 (5 Nov. 1545). A later
letter of ii Nov. (Brewer, xx. 2. 365) refers to debts of the Surveyors’ Court
‘ which IS the Chamber '. In 1552 Charles Tuke was called on by the
l^nvy Council to bring his father’s accounts to the Lord Chamberlain for
view and consideration (Dasent, iv. 164).

^ Trevelyan Papers, ii. i. The book is now m the R. O. It is in the
statement of 1548 that Sir T. Wyatt’s name has been inserted.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 6i

must appear and answer particularities, either in person or,
if ill, by his clerks.^ It seems clear that the Tudor period had
seen a very considerable increas(*» in the scope of the financial
transactions with which the Treasurer of the Chamber had
to deal. In addition to privy purse expenditure in the
narrower sense, such as the royal pocket-money, alms and
oblations, largesse and rewards, and the like, he became
responsible for many wages and annuities, some of which,
including those of the royal players, had formerly been
charged direct upon the Exchequer.^ He purchased the
jewels and costly stuffs in which much of the Tudor wealth
was invested. He financed or helped to finance the Surveyor
of Works, the Great Wardrobe, and even for a time the
Cofferer of the Household. And beyond the limits of any-
thing which could be called domestic expenditure, he under-
took much that was concerned with ‘ the King’s outward
causes the maintenance of posts and ambassadors, royal
loans, secret service ; even, it would appear, although perhaps
out of a special account, the service of war. His income,
originally derived from the Exchequer, was put on to an
independent basis, by the direct assignment to him of
numerous revenues, both ordinary and extraordinary, includ-
ing most of the new sources of wealth on which the financial
policy of Henry VII had firmly based the power of the Crown.
Some of his payments were made in accordance with old
established custom or under household ordinances or other
standing instructions,^ But the great majority depended
upon the personal authority of the sovereign, communicated
either by word of mouth or by warrant under the sign manual
or the signet, or in course of time through the medium of
a minister such as Wolsey or the Privy Council. Similarly
he rendered his accounts at first to the King in person, and
the early books bear the signatures of Henry VII and
Henry VIII in token of audit on many pages.'* The responsi-
bility grew to be a very heavy one, with a turnover of some
£100,000 in the course of a year, and we find Brian Tuke in
1534 writing of it as ‘ a charge that far surmounteth any
in England *, and pressing ‘ that for things ordinary I may
have for payments an ordinary warrant, and that for things
extraordinary I may always have special warrant or else
sorne such way as I, dealing truly, may be truly discharged
lest if there were any misunderstanding, ‘ I might be undone
in a day, lacking any warrant when I sue for it It would

' Dasent, v. 320 ; vi. 182 ; Hatfield MSS, i. 256.

* Cf. ch. xiii (Interlnders).

^ Examples are in H, O. 120, 139, 147. * Cf. App. B.

62

THE COURT

appear to have been the special difficulty of the Treasurer’s
position which led to the system of audit by means of a
‘ Declared Account *, as a siibstitute at once for the cumbrous
method of the earlier Exchequer, and the more recent practice
of personal verification by the sovereign. When Sir Henry
Wyatt left office he was directed to declare his account before
a General Surveyor of the King’s Lands, and this method
was adopted when the Surveyors became a statutory court
in 1541 and ultimately passed after the dissolution of the
special courts into ordinary Exchequer practice.^

Sir William Cavendish, who was ill when the Privy Council
asked for details of his account on 9 October, died on
25 October 1557. An account for i April to 31 December
1557 is in the name of Edmund Felton, perhaps only an
interim administrator.^ The Treasurership of the Chamber,
together with the Mastership of the Posts, was granted by
patent on 29 October 1558 to Sir John Mason, with a fee of
£2^0 and IS. a day.^ Mason was continued in office by
Elizabeth, and on 23 December 1558 the Lord Chamberlain,
the Comptroller of the Household, the Secretary, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer were appointed as a committee
of the Privy Council ‘ to survey the office of the Treasurer of
the Chamber and to assigne order of paymente As a result,
considerable changes seem to have been made, which reversed
the policy of the last half-century and much reduced the
Treasurer’s responsibilities. On the one hand, the funds
assigned to the Cofferer of the Household, the Surveyor of
Works, the Master of Posts, and the Ambassadors no longer
passect through his account ; on the other, a separate account
was established for the more personal expenditure of the
Queen, which was put into the charge of a Groom of the Privy
Chamber, acting as keeper of the Privy Purse. Both accounts
seem to have become subject to audit and declaration at the
Exchequer ; but while that of the Treasurer of the Chamber
was declared annually, the only extant Privy Purse account
of the reign is one for the ten years 1559-69 declared after
the death of the first keeper, John Tamworth.® This was

* A fuller account of the Tudor Chamber finance is given by Newton,

360 ; cf. M. D. George, The Origin of the Declared Account (E. H. R.
xxxi. 41). * Felton was cofferer in 1553 (Archaeologia, xii 372).

* 5 . P, D. Mary, xiv. The fee of £2^0 represents the old fee of £100
attached to the Treasurership, together with allowances of £100 for board
wages, £20 for clerks. £10 for boat-hire, and £10 for office necessaries,
which Cavendish’s accounts show that he enjoyed. The is. a day was
presumably the fee for the Posts.

* Dasent, vii. 15, 27 ; 5 . P. D, Eliz. Addl. ix. 3.

* Nicholas, Ehz. i. 264, printed the accounts of Edmund Downing as

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

63

a small account, mainly fed by New Year and other gifts to
the Queen. The expenditure out of it only averaged about
£2,500 a year. Most of it was dpon gifts and rewards, which
were detailed in a book of particulars under the sign manual,
unfortunately not preserved. A payment of £5,000 to the
Earl of Moray suggests that it proved a convenient channel
for secret service funds. It also includes items for the keep
of the royal fool, for the purchase of jewels, and for certain
annuities, wages, riding charges, and expenses of the stable
and hunt. The Treasurer of the Chamber, under the new
arrangement, spent about £12,000 a year.^ Out of this he
defrayed the royal alms, certain rewards, wages, annuities,
and riding charges, the maintenance of prisoners, and the
expenses of ‘ apparelling * the Queen’s houses and keeping her
gardens. Obviously the two accounts come very near over-
lapping at several points. One may suppose that in the
main the Treasurer of the Chamber was responsible for
customary payments and such as could be made on the
authority of officers of state or household ; the Keeper of
the Privy Purse with those which depended on the personal
pleasure of the sovereign. The officers borne on the Treasurer
of the Chamber’s wage list were those who belonged neither
to the household proper nor to the ‘standing’ offices; the
Yeomen of the Guard, the Watermen, the Apothecaries, the
Musicians and Players, the Hunt, the Footmen and Boys of
the Stable, the Artificers, the Rat and Mole Takers, the
Keepers of Paris Garden, the Surveyor of Gates and Bridges,
the Chester Post. That they should also have included the
officers of the Jewel House is explicable from the original
connexion between these and the Treasurer. The Treasurer’s
own salary and his office expenses also appear in his account.

executor to John Tam worth for 1559-69 from the audited copy in Harleian
Rolls, A. A, 23. Copies are also in the Ptpe Office Declared Accounts, 2791,
and the Audit Office Declared Accounts, 2021, i. No later Elizabethan
Privy Purse Accounts are known, but it appears from the lists of New
Year gifts for 1561, 1578, 1579, 1589, and 1600 (Nichols, Eltz. i. 108;
ii. 65, 249 ; iii. i, 445) that Henry Sackford succeeded John Tam worth
as custodian of gifts given in cash, and he is described as Keeper at
Elizabeth’s death ( 5 . P. D. Jac. I, vi. 2). His successor was Sir George
Home, afterwards (1605) Earl of Dunbar ( 5 . P. D. Docquet of 17 May
Jacobean accounts for 1603-5 are in Pipe Office Declared Accounts,
2792. and in Audit Office Declared Accounts, 2021. Some extracts are in
Cunningham, xviii. In 1617 (Abstract, 6) the Privy Purse disposed of
£5.000 and an additional £1,100 from New Year gifts.

‘ This estimate is based on the account for 1594-5 ; doubtless there
was some variation from year to year. A memorandum of c. 1596 (Hatfield
MSS. vi. 571) gives the annual assignment to the office by warrant dormant
as £13.800.

THE COURT

64

The distinction now drawn between the Treasury of the
Chamber and the Privy Purse must have had the effect of
putting the Treasurer in a j,osition analogous to that of the
Secretaries. He was on the way to becoming an officer of
state rather than an officer of the household.

The order of payment determined upon by the Privy
Council appears to have been that salaries chargeable to the
Treasurer of the Chamber should be payable upon ‘ warrants
dormant ‘ riding charges ’ for messengers upon warrants
from the Secretary, and miscellaneous payments, such as
rewards for plays at court, upon warrants from the Privy
Council itself.^ Sir Francis Knollys became Treasurer of the
Chamber when Mason died upon 21 April 1566^ ; and Thomas,
afterwards Sir Thomas, Heneage, when Knollys was appointed
Treasurer of the Household, on 15 February 1570.^ Knollys,
throughout his period of office, and Heneage, from 1589, com-
bined the Treasurership with the duties of Vice-Chamberlain
of the Household. Heneage died in October 1595, and there
was some delay before a successor was appointed.^ A trial
of strength seems to have taken place between Essex and
Burghlcy, who regarded the filling of the vacancy, together
with the much more important vacancy in the Secretaryship,
as critical to his chances of prolonging his dynasty. Burgh-
ley’s candidate was John Stanhope ; Essex’s Sir Henry
Unton, to whom he wrote about his prospects on 24 October
1595, telling him that Robert Cecil was troubled at the com-
petition, and thought that neither would carry it.® I am not
sure that Cecil had been quite straightforward with Essex.
Another aspirant was Sir Edward Wotton.® There is gossip
about the matter in Rowland Whyte’s letters to Sir Robert
Sidney.*^ On 29 October he wrote, ‘ Probi is comanded to

' On 23 July 1581 Heneage wrote to Hatton (Hatton, 181) that he
could only grant allowances to couriers sent to Mr. Secretary in France if
signed for by the Lord Treasurer, Lord Chamberlain, or Vice-Chamberlain.
On 26 May 1590 {Cecil Papers, iv. 35) a royal warrant directed Heneage
to pay on warrants subscribed by Burghley, as formerly by Walsingham.
Both documents refer to temporary arrangements in the absence of
a Secretary. When Herbert became Second Secretary in 1600, it was
‘ doubted that his warrants for money matters will be of no force to
the Treasurer of the Chamber, which office depends upon the principal
Secretary's warrants ' (Sydney \Papers, ii. 194).

2 Camden (tr ), 130 ; Haynes-Murdin, ii. 761 ; 5 . P, D. Eliz. xl. 20.

^ Wright, Eliz. 1. 355 ; Hatton, 39 ; Heneage's accounts begin on
15 Feb. 1570.

* Camden (tr.), 450 ;||Dasent, xxv. 4.

^ Cecil Papers, iv, 68.

® D. N. B. from Lansd, MS. Ixxix, No. 19.

‘ Sydney Papers, 1. 356. 357, 363, 373. 382.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

65

wayt at court ; hath spoken with her Majestic, and is sayd
he shall haue the Disbursing of the Treasury of the Chamber,
till her Majestic be pleased to bestow yt. Sir H. Umpton
and Mr, John Stanhope, stands for yt.’ On 5 November,
‘ Peter Proby paies the money till a Treasurer of the Chamber
be chosen, which will not be in hast *. Peter Proby was
a useful hanger-on of Burghley’s, and had been his barber.
On 20 November ‘ Sir Thomas Heneges Funerals were
solemnised, his Offices all vnbestowed By 7 December
Whyte ventures a prophecy :

' I heare that Mr. Killigrew shall receve and pay the Treasure of
the Chamber, till the Queen find one fitt for it ; but if this continew
true, Mr. Killigrew will haue it in the End himself.’

Whyte was wrong, however, William Killigrew was a mere
stop-gap.^ On 20 December, Whyte has an inkling of what
is going on, and commits his new information to cipher.

‘ The Queen hath promised him [Sir H. Unton] the Thresureship
of the Chamber, and stands constant in it, and at his return to haue
it. But if 900 [Burghley] and 200 [Cecil], that would 40 [Stanhope]
had it, can hinder it, the other shall goe without it.’

It was not until 5 July that, according to an amused letter
from Anthony Bacon, ‘ Elephas peperit ’ with the swearing
in of Sir Robert Cecil as Secretary and John Stanhope as
Treasurer of the Chamber, ‘ so that now the old man may
say with the rich man in the gospel requiescat anima mea ’.

Burghley himself notes the appointment without comment
in his diary.^ John Stanhope, who was knighted on his
appointment and created Lord Stanhope of Harrington on
4 May 1605, did not get the Vice-Chamberlainship until 1601.
He remained Treasurer until his death in 1617. There was
some characteristic Stuart traffic in the reversion. Sir Thomas
Overbury held it at his death in 1613. Lord Rochester then
bought it from Stanhope for £2,000, and offered it to Sir
Henry Neville, who declined to take it from a subject.
Finally it passed to Sir William Uvedale, who in fact became
Treasurer in succession to Stanhope.®

During Stanhope’s tenure of office, some changes in the
‘ order of payment ’ took place. The account for 1607-8
recites a privy seal of 27 January 1608 as authority for the
transfer from the Privy Purse to the Treasurer of the Chamber

* Cecil Papers, v. 500 ; Haynes-Murdin, ii. 808. Killigrew rendered
an account from 16 Dec. 1595 to 3 July 1596.

* Birch» Elis. ii. 61 ; Haynes-Murdin. ii. 809.

* Birch. James, i. 277 ; 5 . P. D. Jac. 7 , Ixxxi. 15.

3329-1 F

66

THE COURT

of certain payments made on warrants from the Lord Cham-
berlain. Similar payments thereafter form a regular section
of the account from year to year. By a later privy seal of
II October 1614, still extant, an additional sum of £1,500
a year is put at the disposal of the Treasurer to enable him
to meet them.^ His total assignment was thus increased to
about £20,000 or rather more than half as much again as the
office had cost under Elizabeth. That of the Privy Purse
was now about £6,000.^ We have seen that there had been
possibilities of overlapping between the two accounts, but it
is rather odd that amongst the items transferred should be
specified allowances for plays, bear-baitings and other sports,
since such allowances had regularly been paid by the Treasurer
of the Chamber for something more than a century past. It
is, however, the case that from 1614-15 onwards, the pay-
ments were made on warrants from the Lord Chamberlain
instead of the Privy Council.

It is rather surprising that the Privy Council, whose
members were carrying out duties roughly analogous to those
of a modern Cabinet, should at any time have concerned
itself with such trifling matters of domestic routine as the
signature of certificates authorizing the payment of rewards
at recognized rates to companies of actors and other enter-
tainers. The explanation, however, is that the Privy Council,
like the Household and the Departments of State themselves,
was a direct representative of the Norman curia regis^ and
that the curia regis had been the organization through which
the King's subjects and servants gave him assistance in all
his affairs, small and great, domestic as well as political.®
For all practical purposes, indeed, the Elizabethan Privy
Council consisted of little more than the chief officers of the
State departments and Household, sitting together, and acting
collectively. The great territorial magnates, who at certain
periods of its history had turned it into an instrument for
the control rather than the exercise of the royal prerogative,

‘ Lord Chamberlain’s Records, v. 81-3. The recital runs : ‘ Whereas we
have thought fitt to disburden our privy purse of certaine payraentes used
of late to be made out of it, And to assigne the said paymentes to be hence-
forth made by you our Treasurer of our Chamber ... for allowances to
players, for playes made before vs, for bullbayting, beare-bayting, and
anie other sport shewed vnto vs.' The Treasurer is to pay * vpon billes
rated allowed and subsenbed by our Chamberlaine '. Warrants for rewards
for plays were still signed by the Privy Council during 1608-14, hut by
the Chamberlain from 1614.

* Abstract, 7, 12. During 1603-17 the Treasurer of the Chamber had
also had ^2 1,362 for ‘ extraordinary disbursements '

^ The development has been fully worked out by Professor Baldwin.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 67

were now, unless they happened to hold official positions,
rarely sworn amongst its members ; but upon it, side by
side with the Chancellor and th^ Treasurer, the Admiral and
the Privy Seal, sat not only the Secretaries, but also the
Steward and the Chamberlain, the Master of the Horse,
the Treasurer and Comptroller of the* Household, and often
the Vice-Chamberlain or the Treasurer of the Chamber. It
was therefore natural enough, to Tudor no less than to
mediaeval ways of thinking, that among its numerous and
imperfectly defined activities should be included some which
give it the aspect of a Household board of control. It was
in fact by means of a Household ordinance that Henry VIII
regulated the composition of the Privy Council and directed
the constant attendance of the members upon his own per-
son^; and throughout Elizabeth’s reign we find the Council
in the closest possible association with the Court, following
it from palace to palace, and even from stage to stage of the
progress, so that the record of its meetings serves practically
as a royal itinerary, and sitting under the most direct House-
hold influences in some convenient apartment of the Privy
Chamber. There was even no longer, as in the time of
Henry VIII, a ‘ council at London ’ as well as a ‘ council
with the King*, with the exceptions that, if the Court was
very far from head-quarters, a few of the lords sometimes
stayed behind to look after current affairs, and that the
council as a whole seems occasionally to have met at West-
minster when the Court was not there, either in connexion
with the sittings of the Star Chamber, or for special business
in the lodgings of one or other of its members.^ This tradition
of propinquity between the Sovereign and his council was,
however, broken through by James, who at an early date in
his reign took to leaving the lords to transact business at
court, while he went hither and thither on his endless hunting
journeys.

In the absence of any contemporary ordinale for the Privy
Council, some idea of its methods can be gathered from the
register of transactions kept by its clerks and from other
sources.® It is probable that the Queen sometimes sat with

* H. O. 159 (1526).

* Cheyney, i. 67, 106 ; Hornemann, 52 ; Dasent, passim. Certain
regulations called Orders in Star Chamber (cf. App. D, No. cxx) appear
to proceed from the Council sitting in the Star Chamber, but in an
administrative, not a judicial, capacity.

* Cf. generally for this paragraph Cheyney, i. 65 ; Hornemann, 19, 49 ;
E. R. Adair, The Privy Council Registers {E. H. R. xxx. 698) ; and prefaces
to jDasent, passim.

68

THE COURT

the lords, although her attendance is never recorded in the
register.^ The usual president was the Lord Chancellor;
the earlier Tudor post of Prdfeident of the Council was rarely,
if ever, filled up by Elizabeth.^ But the general supervision
of the clerks and the preparation of business for consideration,
other than that which lay directly within the department of
some particular officer, seems to have fallen to the Secretary.
The number of councillors was gradually reduced from twenty-
four at the beginning to thirteen at the end of the reign. Of
these not more than half were generally present at any one
sitting. But there appears to have been no fixed quorum ;
occasionally only two members or even one transacted busi-
ness. At first three meetings a week sufficed ; later they
were often held daily, both by morning and afternoon, and
even on Sundays. Wednesday and Friday were generally
set aside for petitions and other private business, and the
remaining days devoted to public affairs. Drafts of proclama-
tions were passed by the Council before they received the
royal sign manual, and thus became of the nature of Orders
in Council.^ Where a proclamation was not in question, the
conclusions arrived at by the Council were embodied in
a minute, and submitted through the Secretary for royal
approval. When this had been obtained, any executive
action was then taken in the form of warrants or letters to
administrative officers, central or local, or to individuals,
according to the nature of the business. These required the
signature of not less than six councillors, who were not
necessarily those present when the business was discussed.
Before they were put forward for signature they were sub-
scribed by the Secretary or one of the clerks. Warrants to
the Treasurer of the Chamber or other paymasters were also
impressed by the clerk with the special seal, of the council.
The minutes were ultimately placed in the council chest,
which is unfortunately lost. But copies or abstracts of those
which related to public affairs, or in some cases copies of the
letters finally issued, were made by the clerks and from time
to time bound up in volumes, of which a series, far from

* La Mothe, iv. 29 (22 March 1571) : * J’y suys amv6 sur le poinct que
ceux de son conseil venoient de d6battre, devant elle, les poinctz du trett6.*

* Homemann, 54, cites 5 . P. D. Eliz. cclxxviii. 55 as evidence that
Essex was President of the Council ; but surely it was the Council in
Ireland. Scaramelli (F. P. ix. 567) reports an interview with the Council
on 24 Apr. 1603, at which he says the Archbishop of Canterbury, President
of the Council, was not present. This suggests that James had appointed
a President. ' These Lords of the Council', adds Scaramelli, 'behave like
so many kings.’

* Steele, xiv.

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD 69

continuous, is preserved.^ Even at their fullest, however,
these * Acts of the Council * cannot be supposed to form
a complete record of its procee4ings. Council letters are to
be found in many local archives of which no note exists in
the register. There were four or five Clerks of the Council
who took duty, two at a time, according to a monthly rota,
and it is clear that some of them were more business-like
than others. But it is also probable that much business of
a confidential character was deliberately left without record.
In addition to the clerks, there was a Keeper of the Council
Chamber door, probably one of the Ushers of the Chamber,
and the Messengers of the Chamber were available to carry
such letters as could not conveniently be entrusted to the
regular staff of the Master of Posts.^

The ordinary sittings of the Privy Council were of course
held in private, and each member took a special oath of
secrecy upon appointment. But on each Wednesday and
Friday during term time they resolved themselves into the
Court of Star Chamber, and held a public sitting to inquire
into cases of riot, libel, disregard of proclamations, and the
like. Herein they were exercising the old power of the curia
regis to duplicate the functions of the law courts.^ For Star
Chamber purposes they associated with themselves judges,
who ranked as ‘ ordinary * but not ‘ privy ' councillors.^
‘Ordinary ’ councillors also were the Queen’s ‘ counsel learned
in the law ’, who included the Attorney- and Solicitor-Generals
and the Queen’s Serjeants, and the Masters of Requests who,
by another exercise of curial jurisdiction, sat in the old ‘ white
hall ’ at Westminster to deal, under the general direction of
the Privy Council, with civil cases arising out of the suits
of poor men or of royal servants.® The political functions of
the Privy Council lie beyond the scope of this study, but
their concern with all matters affecting breach of the peace,
sedition, heresy, and public health entailed, under more than
one of these heads, a general supervision of the stage, which

» Cf. App. D. Bibl. Note,

^ Robert Laneham was Keeper aad describes his functioos (Laneham,
59) : ' Noow, syr, if the CounceU sit, I am at hand, wait at an inch,
I warrant yoo. If any make babling, " peas I (say I) ** woot ye whear
ye ar ? '* if I take a lystenar, or a priar in at the chinks or at the lokhole,
I am by & by in the bones of him ; but now they keep good order ; they
kno me well inough : If a be a freend, or such one az I lyke, I make him
sit dooun by me on a foorm, or a cheast : let the rest walk, a God’s
name I ’

® Baldwin, 439 ; Cheyney, i. 81 ; Dicey, 68, 94.

* Baldwin, 450 ; Percy, 17.

* Cheyney, i. 109 ; Percy, 48.

70

THE COURT

will be the subject for discussion in a later chapter.^ Similarly,
the players, or those of them who were royal servants, came
as such under the jurisdicti(^ of the Court of Requests, and
some interesting information as to their contracts and disputes
is derived from the records of that tribunal.*

* Cf. ch. ix.

* Cf. chh. xiii (Pembroke’s, Worcester’s), xvi (Theatre, Globe), xvii
(Blackfriars).

Ill

THE REVELS OFFICE

[Sixteenth-century material is collected by A. Feuillerat, Documents
relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (1908,
Matenalien, xxi), and Documents relating to the Office of Revels in the Time
of Edward VI and Mary (1914, Materialien, xhv), which replace the
extracts from Sir Thomas Cawarden’s papers in A J. Kempe, The Loseley
Manuscripts (1835), and the report by J. C. Jeaffreson in Hist. MSS.
vii. 596 (1879), the Audit Office records m P Cunningham, Extracts from
the Accounts of the Revels at Court (1842), and Sir Henry Herbert’s copies
of official papers in J. O. Halliwell-Philhpps, A Collection of Ancient
Documents respecting the Office of Master of the Revels {1870, cited from its
running title as Dramatic Records). A study of the documents is contained
in A. Feuillerat, Le Bureau des Menus -Plaisirs et la Mtse en Sctne d la
Cour d* Elizabeth (1910). Much of my own Notes on the History of the
Revels Office under the Tudors (1906) is incorporated in the present chapter.
Cunningham’s book is still useful for the seventeenth century ; the
authenticity of some of his documents is discussed in Appendix B. Of
earlier historians of the stage, George Chalmers, Apology for the Believers
in the Shakespeare-Papers (1797), deals most fully with the Revels Office ,
it is matter for regret that Sir George Buck's ‘ particular commentary '
of the * Art of Revels ’ has disappeared. In his Supplementary Apology
(1799) Chalmers made many extracts from the office books, now apparently
lost, of Sir Henry Herbert (1623-73). Others had already been published
by Malone (Variorum, iii). These have now been collected with other
material, including the later documents from Dramatic Records, m J. Q.
Adams, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert (1917, cited as Herbert).]

One of the ‘ standing ’ offices which, from the general
oversight exercised over them by the Lord Chamberlain, may
also be regarded as ‘ offices outward of the Chamber ’ was
the Revels Office. This, in its fullest establishment, consisted
of a Master, a Clerk Comptroller, and a Clerk, whose services
it shared with the analogous Office of Tents, a Yeoman,
and a Groom. It was of Tudor origin. The first mention
of a Master of Revels is in a Household order of 31 December
1494.^ But the post appears to have been at this period
a purely temporary one, conferred upon some existing officer
of the Household, who had been selected to supervise and
defray the expenses of the revels for a particular feast.
Several of these ad hoc Masters are recorded at the court of
Henry VIII ; the most prominent was Sir Henry Guildford,

‘ Order for Sitting the King's Great Chamber (H. O. 113) : 'If the
master of revells be there, he may sitt with the chapleyns or with the
esquires or gentlemen ushers.*

72

THE COURT

who held various offices, including that of Comptroller of the
Household. The Masters appear to be distinct from the
Lords of Misrule, who were ^Iso appointed pro hac vice during
the Christmas season, but whose duties were ceremonial and
quasi-dramatic, rather than administrative.^ In dealing with
the details of Revels organization, the transitory and fluc-
tuating Masters had, from the beginning of the reign, the
assistance of a permanent official, who belonged originally to
the establishment of the Wardrobe. It was his business
to carry into effect the general directions of the Master ; to
obtain stuffs from mercers or from the Wardrobe itself, and
ornaments from the Jewel House and the Mint ; to engage
architects, carpenters, painters, tailors and embroiderers ; to
superintend the actual performances in the banqueting-hall
or the tilt-yard, and attempt to preserve the costly and
elaborate pageants from the rifling of the guests ; to have
the custody of dresses, visors, and properties ; and finally,
to render accounts and obtain payment for expenses from
the Exchequer. These duties, with others of like character,
were long performed by one Richard Gibson, whose careful
accounts, compiled in an execrable orthography, preserve
many curious details of forgotten pageantries, including the
employment of none other than Hans Holbein in the decora-
tion of a banqueting-hall at Greenwich. Gibson had a double
qualification for his functions. In addition to his office as
Porter and Yeoman Tailor of the Wardrobe, he had been,
as far back as 1494, one of the King’s players.* He had
apparently the art of making himself indispensable, for he
gradually accumulated both posts and pensions. He held the
ancient office of Pavilionary or Serjeant of Tents, and in this
capacity made the arrangements for the Field of the Cloth
of Gold in 1520. By 1526 he was one of the royal Serjeants-
at-Arms.® Machyn, who records the burning of his son for
heresy at Smithfield in 1557, describes him as ‘ sergantt
Gybsun, sergantt of armes, and of the reywelles, and of the
kynges tenstes It is not, however, clear that he held
a distinct post as Serjeant of Revels, and when a patent was
issued to his successor, John Farlyon, in 1534, it was not as
Serjeant, but only as Yeoman.® Farlyon also became in
course of time Serjeant of Tents, and the traditional con-
nexion between Tents and Revels was never wholly broken.

‘ Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 404. a Cf. ch. xiii.

3 Brewer, i. 24, 283. 690. 828; ii. 875, 1044, 1479 .* iii. 129; iv. 868;
cf. Tudor Revels, 6.

* Machyn, 157.

« Brewer, vii. 560 ; Feuillerat. M. P. 22 ; cf. Tudor Revels, 7.

THE REVELS OFFICE 73

Whether John Travers, who became Serjeant of Tents on
Farlyon’s death in 1539, had any supervision over John
Bridges, who became Yeoman erf Revels, is rather doubtful.^
But the position becomes quite clear in 1545, when the
Serjeantship of Tents was converted into a Mastership, and
its holder, Sir Thomas Cawarden, was also appointed, under
a separate patent of ii March 1545, to an entirely new post
as a permanent Master of the Revels, to whom the Yeoman
naturally became subordinate.^ This continued to be John
Bridges until 1550, when he was succeeded by John Holt,
who had acted as his deputy since 1547.® Cawarden enlarged
the establishment by securing the appointment of a Clerk
Comptroller to check and of a Clerk to keep the books, thus
leaving the Yeoman free to devote himself to the practical
side of the business.^ Both these officers served, and con-
tinued throughout our period to serve, alike for the Tents
and the Revels. John Barnard was Clerk Comptroller from
1545 to 1550, when he was succeeded by Richard Lees.^ The
first Clerk was Thomas Philipps, who was appointed in 1546,
and held his post until 1560.® But from 1551 most of the
duties were performed by a deputy, Thomas Blagrave, who
succeeded to the Clerkship on 25 March 1560.“^ Blagrave was
a personal ‘ servant * of Cawarden, who probably saw to it
that all the subordinate officers appointed after the retirement
of Bridges were his own nominees. Each, however, held his
post under a patent direct from the Crown, and this arrange-
ment bore the promise of administrative complications when
the personal relation with the Master had terminated. The
following document illustrates the organization of the office
as settled by Cawarden about 1546:®

‘ Brewer, xiv. i. 574 ; 2, 102, 159.

* Patent in Feuillerat. Ehz. 53. The appointment was retrospective
from 1 6 March 1544. Cawarden had taken an inventory of Revels stuff
for the King as far back as 10 Dec. 1542 (Feuillerat, M. P. 27). The
historical memorandum of 1573 (cf. p. 82) printed in Tudor Revels, 2,
says, * After the deathe of Travers Seriaunt of the said office, Sir Thomas
Carden knight, beinge of the kinges maiesties pryvie Chamber, beinge
skilful! and deiightinge in matters of devise, preferred to that office, did
mislyke to be tearmed a Seriaunt because of his better countenaunce of
roome and place beinge of the kinges maiesties privye Chamber. And
so became he by patent the first master of the Revelles.’

* Patent in Feuillerat, Eliz. 70 ; cf. Feuillerat, Edw. and M. 4, 9.

^ Tudor Revels, 2, from memorandum of 1573.

* Brewer, xx. i. 213 ; Feuillerat, M. P. 28 ; Edw, and M. 49 ; Patent

to Lees in Feuillerat, Eliz. 56. ® Patent m Feuillerat, Eliz. 66.

’ Patent in Feuillerat, Eliz. 68 ; cf. Edw. and M, 74, 180, 272. Blagrave
is described as Cawarden's * servant ' in 1546-7, and again in Cawarden's
will of 1559. He was aged about 50 on 27 June 1572 (M. 5 . C. li. 52).

* Kempe, 93.

74

THE COURT

Constitudons howe the King's Revells ought to be usyd :

Fyrst, an Invyntory to be made by the Clarke controwler and
Clarke, by the Survey and apowjntinge of the mastyr of the Revells,
Aswell of all and singular masking garments wfth all thear fumyture,
as allso of all bards for horsis, coveryng of bards and bassis of all
kynds, with all and singular the appurtenances, which Invytory,
subscribyd by the yoman and clarke, ought to remayne in the custody
of the Master of the OflFyces and the goodes for the saeffe kepyng.

lUm, that no kynd of stuff be bowght, but at the apowyentment
of the Master or hiis depute Clarke controwler, being counsell therin,
and that he make mencion therof, in his booke of recept wAich ought
to be subscribyd as afforseyd by the Master.

It^m, that the Clarke be privey to the cutting of all kynds of
garments, and that he make mencion in his booke of thyssuing owt
howe moche it takyth of all kynds to every maske, revelle, or tryumph,
wAich boke ought to be subscrybyd as afforseyd by the Master.

Itfm, that the Clarke kepe check of all daye men working on the
pr«nisses, and to make two lyger boks of all wags and provisions of
all kynd whate so ev^, th^ one for the paye master and th^ other for
the Master.

It^m, that no garments forseyd, bards, cov^ing of bards, bassis,
or suche lyck, be lent to no man without a specyall comaundment,
warrant, or tokyn, from the Kyng^s Mawtie, but that all be leyd up
in feyr stonderds or pressis, and every presse or stonderd to have
two locks a pece, with severall wards, with two keys, th« one for the
Master or Clarke, and the other for the yoman, so that non of them
cum to the stuff without th« other.

In Farlyon’s time the Revels stuff had been housed at the
royal mansion of Warwick Inn in the City.^ Cawarden moved
it in 1547 to the Blackfriars, where various parts of the old
Priory buildings served at different times as store-rooms and
work-rooms or as residences for the officers.^ Much material
bearing upon the activities of the Revels during 1544-59 is
preserved at Loseley Hall, amongst the papers of Cawarden’s
executor, Sir William More, who also acquired his interest in
the Blackfriars. Cawarden lived just long enough to super-
intend the festivities at Elizabeth’s coronation. After his
death on 29 August i 559 f his offices were distributed.* The
Mastership of the Tents was given to Henry Sackford of
the Privy Chamber. Banqueting houses, however, which had
originally been the concern of the Tents, seem now to have

‘ Brewer, i. 636, 757 ; ii. 179 ; xvi. 603.

* Feuillerat, Edw. and M. 3 ; cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

’ Tudor Revels, 3, from memorandum of 1573. An account of Cawarden *s
life by T. Craib is in Surrey Arch, Colls, xxviii. 7 (1915). There is a doubt
as to the exact date of his death. The i.p.m. gives 29 Aug. ; his epitaph
25 |Aug. Similarly the Blechingley register gives 29 Aug. for his funeral ;
Machyn, 208, gives 5 Sept,

THE REVELS OFFICE

75

been put in charge of the Revels. The Mastership of the
Revels was given, by a patent dated i8 January 1560, to
Sir Thomas SengerJ The Clerki Comptroller and Clerk con-
tinued as in former years to be joint officers for the Tents
and the Revels. Benger is a somewhat shadowy personage.
It is upon record that he gave Elizabeth a ring as a New
Year’s gift in 1562 ; that the Westminster boys rehearsed
the Heautontimoroumenos and Miles Gloriosus before him in
1564 and spent 6d. on ‘ pinnes and sugar candee ’ ; that he
got a licence to ei^port 300 tons of beer in 1566 ; that he had
players of his own at Canterbury in 156^70 ; and that the
corporation of Saffron Walden spent 3.^. 6rf. upon a ‘ podd *
of oysters for him at Elizabeth’s visit to Audley End in 1571.^
Apparently he began his administration with good intentions.
The following note is affixed to his first Revels* estimate, that
for the Christmas of 1559-60 :

‘ Memorandum, that the chargies for making of maskes cam never
to so little a somme [£227 11s, 2i.] as they do this yere, for the same
did ever amount, as well in the Quenes Highnes tyme that nowe is,
as at all other tymes hertofore, to the somme of £400 alwaies when it
was leaste.

' M®. also, that it may please the Quenes Ma^*® to appoint some
of her highnes prevy Counsaile, immediatly after Shroftyde yerely,
to survey the state of the saide office, to thintent it may be Imowne
in what case I fownd it, and how it hathe byn since used.

‘ M®. also, that the saide Counsailors may have aucthoritie to
appoint suche fees of cast garments as they shall think resonable,
and not the M^. to appoint any, as hertofore he hathe done ; for

1 think it most for the M". savegarde so to be used.’ *

The cast garments were a perquisite of the officers, and
were sold by them, doubtless to actors. The change in the
Mastership led also to a change in the local habitation of
the Revels. It is to be supposed that the buildings with
which Cawarden had supplemented the official storehouse
were no longer available after they had passed to his executors.
In any case, it is clear from the survey of 1586-7 described

' Patent in Rymer, xv. 565 ; Collier, i. 170. from privy seal ; Feuillerat,
Elix, 54.

* Nichols, Eltz, i. 115, 280; Athenaeum (1903), i. 220. 3 Library,
ix. 252 ; Collier, i. 185. A reference to the Master of ‘ Revels * in Hatfield
MSS, i. 551 is a mistake for ‘ Rolls ’. Benger was son of Robert Benger
or Bcrcngcr of Marlborough (Harl. Soc, Visitations, Iviii. 10), was knighted

2 Oct. 1353 (Machyn, 335), and was auditor to Elizabeth as princess
(Heame, J^n of Glastonbury, 519). Further personal notes are in Stopes,
Hunnis, 104, 31 1.

* Collier, i. 171 (assigned in error to Cawarden) ; Feuillerat, Elis, no,
from S. P. D, Elis, vii. 50.

THE COURT

76

below that upon Cawarden’s death the Office of the Revels
was removed to the ‘ late Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem *
in Clerkenwell. Probably ^he transfer had taken place by
10 June 1560, as an inventory was drawn up on that date of
‘ certeyne stuff remay nynge in the Black Fryers in London
The Tents, as well as the Revels, seem to have been moved
to St. John’s.2

In accordance with Benger’s request, a survey of the Revels
was undertaken, under a warrant from the Privy Council of
27 April 1560, by Sir Richard Sackville and Sir Walter
Mildmay, the Under Treasurer and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and a draft of a document submitted to them
is preserved at Loseley.^ This contains a detailed account
of the transactions of the Office since the last audit in i555i
as a result of which Cawarden’s executors established a claim
for a balance or ‘ surplusage ’ of £740 13^. io\d, against the
Exchequer. The total expenditure of the Office for the period
covering Elizabeth’s coronation and first Christmas had been
£602 1 15. To the account are appended inventories

showing the sets of masking garments which existed in 1555,
the materials since issued from the Wardrobe, the use made
of both of these in the fashioning of new garments and the
‘ translation ’ of old ones, and the sets found in the Office at
the time of the survey. These are marked as either ‘ service-
able ’ or ‘ not serviceable ’ or ‘ chargeable but ‘ fees and
the warrant from the Council instructs the commissioners
that cast garments ‘ being fees incydente to the saide office
may be taken by y* Master of y* Revelles & dystributed in
soche sorte as haue bene accostomed Probably the officers
sold them to players.^ No further detailed accounts are
available until the last year of Benger’s Mastership, but there
are summaries which show an average annual expenditure of
about £570.® For some reason, there was a great increase

‘ Hist, MSS. vii. 615.

2 Lady Derby writes to Sir Christopher Hatton in 1580 that she had
been with her cousin Sackford (Master of the Tents) in ' his house at
St. John’s ’ (Nicolas, Hatton, 148).

3 Printed by Feuillerat, Edw. and M. 180 ; Eliz. 18, 77.

* Sometimes garments no longer useful for masks, but not yet cast as
fees, had been altered for players, and either kept in the office and * often
used by players ’, or given to the players or musicians * by composicion '
or * for their fee Some were missing because ‘ the lordes that masked
toke awey parte ', or they had been * gyven awaye by the maskers in
the queenes presence Some were treated as fees, because * to moche
knowen ’ ; in an earlier inventory of 1 555 we find ' ffees because the King
hath worin hit * (Feuillerat, Edw. and M. 299 ; Eliz. 24, 25, 27, 40.

® Feuillerat, Eliz. 109, 119, 124, 125, 126. Possibly the amounts of
imprests are in some years to be added.

THE REVELS OFFICE

77

of cost in 1571-2, which is the first of a series of years for
which elaborate accounts exist in the Record Office. These
are of a detailed nature, much like that of Cawarden’s
accounts at Loseley, and arranged more or less under heads.
Schedules of the plays and masks given during the periods
to which they relate are in some cases attached. A brief
analysis of the account for 1571-2 will show the general
character of the entries. I can only dwell here upon those
which relate to the organization of the Revels Office, and
not upon those of merely dramatic or scenic interest. The
main account runs from the end of Shrovetide, 1571, to the
end of Shrovetide, 1572, and covers, firstly, a period of nine
months from March to November, during which the occupa-
tion of the Office was limited to the airing and safeguard of
‘ stuff ’ and attendance upon the Master during the progress,
and, secondly, an active three months of revels and prepara-
tion for revels, from December to February. This expenditure
is accounted for under two main heads, Wages and Allowances
and Emptions and Provisions. It may be abstracted as
follows :

A. Wages and Allowances.

(i.) March to November.

Tailors and Attendants .

Attendants (9) on Progress
Porter (60 days) ....

Diet of Officers (60 days)

Necessaries bought by Yeoman

(ii.) December to February.

Tailors and Attendants .

Property - makers^ Embroiderers,

Haberdashers

Painters .....

Porter (80 days, 15 nights)

Diet of Officers (80 days, 15 nights) .

B. Emptions and Provisions.

(i.) March to November.

(ii.) December to February.

Mercers (4)

Draper

Upholster

Silkwomen (Joan Bowll and another)

Petty Cash (Comptroller)

I s. d. i s. d.
26 o o

19 o

300
30 o o

3 13 o 76 12 o

113 8 8

39 I 2
35 18 2
4 ^5 o

47 10 o 240 13 o

Nil,

938 8 7
52 15 3
32 5 8
74 14 4i
100

Carried forward 1099 3 lo^

78

THE COURT

£

s.

d.

Brought forward

1099

3 foi

Petty Cash (Yeoman) . r. .

80

II

2

Implements for Properties

14

II

I

Furrier

2

2

6

Colours

13

16

I

Wiredrawer

6

16

0

Vizards (Thomas Giles) .

4

s

0

Necessaries for Hunters .

I

I

8

Device for Thunder and Lightning .

I

2

0

Chandler .....

5

15

5

Hire of Armour ....

3

9

8

Buskin-maker ....

0

11

4

Brian Dodmer (travelling ex-

penses, &c.) ....

3

0

0

Boat-hire, &c., for Comptroller

I

0

0

,, „ Clerk {per John

Drawater) ....

I

0

0

Green cloth, &c., for Clerk

3

6

8

Sunttna Totalis,

Wages and Allowances
Emptions and Provisions ,

£ s, d,

‘ 317 5 o

. 1,241 12 5j^
£i, 55 S 17 5 i

In many cases reference is made to the bills of the trades-
men for further details. At the end of the account is
appended a supplementary account, amounting to £26 35. 2d,,
for the three months from March to May, 1572, during which
a further airing took place. The airings involved an elaborate
process of what would now be called the ‘ spring-cleaning ’
of all the stuff in the office. There is also a list of six plays
and six masks performed during Christmas and Shrovetide.
The plays were acted by companies of men or children who
were ‘ apparelled and ffurnished ’, and provided with * apt
howses, made of canvasse, (framed, ffashioned and paynted
accordingly ’ by the Revels Office. It is noted that the six
plays were ‘ chosen owte of many and ffownde to be the best
that then were to be had ; the same also being often perused
and necessarely corrected and amended by all the afforeseide
officers ’. Four of the masks were new ; the other two ‘ were
but translated and otherwise garnished being of the former
number by meanes wherof the chardge of workmanshipp and
attendaunce is cheefely to be respected It will be observed
that the Account does not include any items for the fees of
the officers or for the hire of lodgings or storehouses. The

THE REVELS OFFICE 79

former were payable under their patents at the Exchequer,
the latter provided in the royal house of St. John’s. The
officers get an allowance for diebwhen on active duty, either
in the time of airings or in that of revels ; and this is fixed,
for each day or night, at 4s. for the Master, 2s, for the Clerk
Comptroller, 2S. for the Clerk, and 2$. for the Yeoman. There
is a similar allowance of is, for a Porter, described more fully
in a later account as the Porter of St. John’s Gate. His
name was John Dauncy.^ The Account discloses some changes
in the establishment since 1559. Thomas Blagrave is still
Clerk. Richard Lees had been succeeded as Clerk Comptroller
on 30 December 1570 by Edward Buggin.^ During the earlier
part of the period John Holt is still Yeoman, but exercises
his functions through a deputy, William Bowll, a Yeoman of
the Chamber ; he was replaced by John Arnold on ii Decem-
ber 1571.^ There is a letter to Cecil from William Bowll,
written at some date after March 1571, in which he recites
that he has recently delivered to Cecil letters from the Lord
Treasurer (the Marquis of Winchester), Sir Thomas Benger,
and John Holt, for a joint grant of the Yeomanship to him*
self and John Holt ; that he has long served as Holt’s deputy
and paid him money on a composition as well as meeting
some of the debts of the Office ; that Holt is now dead and
that he and his family will be undone unless Cecil procures
him the post.^ His suit, however, was obviously unsuccessful.
Holt’s tenure of the Yeomanship had thus extended from
1547 to 157^- He may himself have been an actor, if, as
seems likely, he is the ‘ John Holt, momer ’, who received
rewards for attendance on the Westminster boys at a pageant
in 1561.

If Arnold was appointed in the winter of 1571, it was
against him, rather than against Holt or his deputy Bowll,
that a complaint was lodged with Burghley about a year
later by one Thomas Giles. Giles was one of the tradesmen
of the Revels. He is described in the Accounts as a haber-
dasher, and purchases of vizards were made from him. The
burden of his complaint was that the officers of the Revels,
and particularly the Yeoman, who had the custody of the
masking garments, were in the habit of letting these out on
hire, to their manifest deterioration, and, one fears, also to
the injury of Giles’s business. He enumerates twenty-one
occasions upon which masks, including the new cloth of gold,

‘ Feuillerat, £/w. 130, 135. * Patent in Feuillerat, 58.

^ Patent in Feuillerat, 72.

* Feuillerat, 408, from 5 . P. D. Eliz. Add, xx. loi ; Collier, i 230,
who thinks that the application was for the Mastership of the Revels. |

8o

THE COURT

black and white, and murrey satin ones, made for the Queen’s
delectation during the previous Christmas, had been so let
out to lords, lawyers, and r citizens, in town and country,
between January and November 1572.^

It is probable that Burghley, who became Lord Treasurer
in July 1572, took early steps to look into the administration
of the Revels Office, for which the death of Sir Thomas
Benger about June of the same year afforded an opportunity.^
Certainly there was no possibility of bringing about any
immediate economy, for the embassy of the Due de Mont-
morency from France had already caused a great increase of
cost. The Revels bill for 1572-3 amounted to £1,427 125. 6 \d,
or very little less than that for 1571-2. Of this about £1,000
was directly due to Montmorency’s visit. Moreover, the
greater part of the expenditure upon revels was not directly
defrayed through the Office. They bought some stuff in the
open market, and employed some workmen. But they had
also large supplies from the Great Wardrobe, while the
structure of banqueting- houses and the like was undertaken
by the Office of Worl«. The total cost, therefore, for any
one year would have to be pieced together from the accounts
of all three offices. This task has never been essayed, but
on Montmorency’s coming an imprest of £200 was made to
Lewis Stocket, Surveyor of the Works, and another of £300
to John Fortescue, Master of the Great Wardrobe, while
a memorandum in Burghley’s papers cites a warrant of
12 July 1572 which authorizes the delivery by Fortescue to
Benger of stuffs to no less value than £1,757 Ss. i^d.^

Pending Burghley’s investigation no patent was issued for
a successor to Benger. During the Christmas of 1573, the
oversight of the Office was committed jointly to Fortescue
and to Henry Sackford, the Master of the Tents, and the
whole of the account for the period from i June 1572 to
31 October 1573 is signed by them, together with the inferior
officers of the Revels. There are signs of an ambition towards
economy in entries showing that on several occasions during
the year claims upon the Office were reduced after examina-

* Feuillerat, Eliz. 409 ; Collier, i. 191 ; from Lansd. MS. 13 ; cf. ch. v.

2 Feuillerat, Eliz. 429. He died in debt, and his will was not proved
until 1377 (Chalmers, 482). This led me into thinking (Tudor Revels, 26)
that during 1572-7 he was alive, but not actively exercising his functions,
and possibly into some injustice in suggesting that he had ‘ in the end
proved an extravagant and unbusinesslike Master Yet Blagrave’s
memorandum of 1573 (vide infra) seems to lay a special stress on the
importance of appointing a Master who shall be ‘ neither gallant, prodigall,
nedye, nor gredye

^ Feuillerat, Eltz. 187, 456, correcting Collier, i. 198 and Tudor Revels, 26.

THE REVELS OFFICE 8i

tion by the Comptroller and other officers.' The auditors in
their turn had an eye upon the Office. A sum of £50 was
originally included in the account with the explanation :

'Item more for new presses to be made thorowowte the whole
storehowse for that the olde were so rotten that they coulde by no
meanes be repayred or made any waye to serve agayne. The Queenes
Maiesties store lyeng now on the ffloore in the store howse which of
necessitie must preasently be provyded for before other workes can
well beginne. W^iche presses being made as is desyred by the Officers
wilbe a greate safegarde to the store preasently remayning and lyke-
wise of the store to coome whereby many things may be preserved
that otherwyse wilbe vtterly lost and spoyled contynually encreasing
her Maiesties charge.*

To this is appended a note :

' Not allowid for so moche as the said presseis ar not begonn.* *

It may be admitted that the cost of the Revels would have
been less if the officers had been in a position to pay for the
goods supplied to them in ready money. They probably got
small * imprests * or advances at the beginning of the year
when they could, but for the most part they had to obtain
credit and satisfy their tradesmen with debentures, redeemable
when the accounts had been audited and a warrant under the
privy seal for the payment of the certified expenses issued.
Elizabeth succeeded to an exchequer already burdened with
the debt of past reigns, and the issue of these warrants was
often delayed. William Bowll had made it part of his claim
to be appointed Yeoman in succession to John Holt that
he had made advances for ‘ payment to the workemen and
other poore creditors for mony due unto them in the said
office, accordinge to thear necessities before any warant
graunted, only for to mayntayn the credit of the said office *.
An undated letter is preserved amongst Burghley’s papers in
which he makes an attempt to recover a sum of £236 due
to him for goods supplied over a period of two years and nine
months.® A similar letter, written on behalf of the creditors
and artificers serving the office, and signed by ‘ Poore Bryan
Dodmer a creditour, to saue the labour of a great number
whose exclamacion is lamentable refers specifically to the
unpaid balance of the office account on 28 February 1574,
which stood at £1,550 5s. 8d.^ Bryan Dodmer had received

» Feuillerat, Eliz, 157, 160, 172, 178. * Ibid. 186.

* Tudor Revels, 28 ; Feuillerat, Eliz. 416 ; from Lansd. MS. 83, f. 145,
misdated in pencil * July 1597 *.

♦ Tudor Revels, 29 ; Feuillerat, Eliz. 412 ; from Lansd. MS. 83, f. 147.
Dodmer was still pursuing a claim in the Court of Requests in May 1576
(Feuillerat, Eliz. 413).

3329*1

Q

82

THE COURT

a legacy from Sir Thomas Cawarden in 1559, and is shown
by the account of 1571--2 to have been at that time occupied
in the affairs of the Revds Office, although not on the estab-
lishment. To 1573 and 1574 may be ascribed three memor-
anda, which were evidently prepared for Burghley’s assistance
in considering schemes of reform. Two of these, although
longer than can be printed here, are singularly illuminating
to students of departmental history. One, in particular, gives
a very capable summary of the situation, and is informed
by a good deal of sound administrative sense.^ It begins
with a short historical notice of the origin and foundation of
the Revels and a suggestion for a fresh amalgamation of the
Mastership with those of the Tents and Toils. The writer
then considers the possibility of either farming out the office,
or fixing a definite allowance for all ordinary charges, and
rejects both proposals as impracticable. Nor does he see
much room for economy in the ‘ airings *, or in a reduction
in the number of officers ; on the contrary, he is in favour
of supplementing the Master, who must give attendance at
Court, by a working head of the Office with the rank of
Serjeant. He lays stress on the importance of co-operation
amongst the officers, and while not prepared to abrogate the
quasi-indcpendence of the Master which the appointment of
the inferior officers by patent gave them, submits an elaborate
draft of new ordinances provisionally dated in the regnal year
1572-3, and intended to replace those which he understands
to have been delivered ‘ before my time ’ to some of the
Queen's Privy Council. ^ This deals, not only with the func-
tions of each officer, but also with the time-table of the year's
work, the control of the artificers, the economical employment
of wardrobe stuff, the books to be kept, and the avoidance
of debt by a liberal imprest. An historian of the stage can
wish that the suggestion had been adopted for order to be
annually given ‘ to a connynge paynter to enter into a fayer
large ligeard booke in the manner of limnynge the maskes
and shewes sett fourthe in that last seruice, to thende varyetye
may be vsed from tyme to tyme I think that the author
of this document was probably Buggin, the Clerk Comptroller,
since the two other memoranda are clearly on internal evi-
dence the work of Blagrave, the Clerk, and one of the
Yeomen, and Burghley is likely to have given each officer

Text in full in Tudor Revels, i, 31, and Feuillerat, Eliz. 5, from
Lansd. MS. 83, f. 158.

* Feuillerat, Eliz. 432, points out that, as Elizabeth's Privy Council is
referred to, these ordinances can hardly have been those of Cawarden
(cf. p. 74) as I suggested in Tudor \Revels, 34.

THE REVELS OFFICE 83

a chance of expressing his views. It might, however, have
been Henry Sackford, in view of the suggestion for amalga-
mation with the Tents, and in any case Buggin probably
had Sackford’s interests in mind, not to speak of his own
chances of obtaining the contemplated Serjeanty. Blagrave’s
proposals are in matters of detail not unlike Buggin’s, but
he does not endorse the suggestion of a Serjeant, and is less
skilful in keeping his personal ambitions in the background.'

If it please her highnes to bestowe the Ma5/frship of the office vpon
me (as I trust myne experience by acquayntaunce wttA those thaffaires
and contynuall dealing therein by the space of xxvij or xxviij yeres
deserveth, being also the auncient of the office by at the leaste xxiiij
of those yeres ; otherwise I wolde be lothe hereafter to deale nor
medle witA it nor in it further then apperteyneth to the clerke, whose
allowaunce is so small as I gyve it holy to be discharged of the toyle
and attendaunce). I haue hetherto witAoute recompence to my greate
chardge and hynderaunce borne the burden of the Master, and taken
the care and paynes of that, others haue had the thankes and rewarde
for, wWch I trust her MatVstie will not put me to wttAoute the fee,
alowaunce, and estimacton longing to it, nor if her highnes vouchesafe
not to bestowe it vpon me to let me passe witAoute recompence for
that is done and paste.

If the Fee and allowaunce be thought to muche, then let what her
Max>5tie and Honorable counsaile shall thinke mete for any man that
shall supplie that burden and place to haue towardfs his chardgfi
be appointed of certeyntie, and I will take that, and serve for as litle
as any man that meanes to Deale truly, so I be not to greate a loser
by it.

The Yeoman’s Memorandum is short enough to be given
in full.2

A note of sarten thingf^ which are very nedefull to be Redressed
in the offys of the Revelles.

1. Fyrste the Romes or Loging«, where the garments and other
thing^ 5 , as hedpeces and suche lyke, dothe lye. Is in suche decaye
for want of reparacions, that it hath by that meanes perished A very
greate longe wall, which jmrte thereof is falne doune and hath broke
undoune A greate presse, which stoode all Alongest the same, by
wAich meanes I ame fayne to laye the garments vppon the grounde,
to the greate hurt of the same, so as if youre honoure ded se the
same it woolde petye you to see .suche stoffe so yll bestowed.

2 . Next there is no convenyent Romes for the Artifycers to wourke

* Text in fuU in Tudor Revels, 42, and Feuillerat, Elix, 17, from Lansd.
MS. 83. f. 154. The time-references agree with 1573 or 1574, if Blagrave's
unestablished service in the Revels began as early as 1546.

* Lansd. MS. 83, f. 149. The reference to two years* debts suggests
a date, when compared with Dodmer's, in the summer of 1574 ; if so, the
writer will be Fish, rather than Arnold.

THE COURT

84

in, but that Taylours, Paynters, Proparatiue makers, and Carpenders
are all fayne to wourke in one rome, which is A very greate hinderaimce
one to Another, wAfch thinge rfedes not for theye are slacke anowe
of them selves.

3. More, there ys two whole yeares charg^^ be hinde vn payde, to
the greate hinderaunce of the poore Artyfycers that wourke there.
In so mvche that there be A greate parte of them that haue byn
dryven to sell there billes or debentars for halfe that is dewe vnto
them by the same.

4. More, yt hath broughte the offyce in suche dyscredet with those
that dyd delyver wares into the offyce, that theye will delyuer yt in
for A thirde parte more then it is woorthe, or ellce we can get no
credet of them for the same, which thinge is A very greate hinderaunce
to the Queenes maiWtie and A greate discredet to those that be
offecers in that place, which thinge for my parte I Ame very sory
to see.

This is endorsed,

' For the Reuels. Matters to be redressed there.*

The documents are proposals for reform rather than state-
ments of existing practice ; but proposals for reform made
by permanent officials are not generally very sweeping, and
I think it may be taken that we get a pretty fair notion
of the actual working of a Government department in the
sixteenth century, not without certain hints of jealousies and
disputes between the various officers as to their respective
functions and privileges, which in those days as in these
occasionally tended to interfere with the smooth working of
the machine. The determination of these functions and
privileges by regulation; the keeping of regular books,
inventories, journals, and ledgers ; the institution of a system
of finance which would avoid the necessity of employing
credit ; the prohibition of the hiring-out of Revels stuff ;
these are amongst the improvements in organization which
suggested themselves to practical men who were not in the
least likely to suggest the transference of the duties of their
own rather superfluous Office to the Office of Works or the
Wardrobe. Both Buggin and Blagrave ask that the hands
of the officers might be strengthened by a commission ; that
is, apparently, a warrant entitling them to enforce service on
behalf of the Crown, such as the Master of the Children of
the Chapel had to * take up * singing-boys, and other depart-
ments of the Household, including probably the Tents, had
for the purveyance of provisions and cartage. Probably the
Revels had already enjoyed this authority upon special occa-
sions, The Account for the banqueting house of 1572 includes
an item for ‘ flowers of all sortes taken up by comyssion and

THE REVELS OFFICE

85

gathered in the feeldes At the bottom of the documents
there is a feeling that the weak point in the organization is
the Mastership. The Master h^ to be a courtier, dancing
attendance on the Queen and the Lord Chamberlain, and was
likely to have the qualities and failings of a courtier ; and
then he came to the office, and gave instructions to people
who knew their own business much better than he did.

Blagrave’s ambitions to become Master of the Office were
not wholly gratified. He was allowed to act as Master for
some years, but he never received a patent, and after Benger’s
death he had the mortification of seeing the post given to
another, while he was left to content himself with his much
despised Clerkship. His regency lasted from November 1573
until Christmas 1579, and his signature stands alone or heads
those of the other officers upon the Accounts relating to that
period, with the exception of the last, on which the name of
the incoming Master appears.*^ His appointment was pre-
sumably from year to year. It is stated in the Account
for 1573-4 to have been made by ‘ her Majestie's pleasure
signefyed by the right honorable L. Chamberlaine *, and in
that for 1574-5 to appear from ‘ sundry letters from the
Lorde Chamberlayne’. And the vacancy emphasized the de-
pendence of the Revels upon that great branch of the
tripartite Household, the Chamber, over which the Lord
Chamberlain presided. All Blagrave’s activities were subject
to control by his superior officer. He and his subordinates
were constantly going by boat or horse to Richmond, or
wherever the Court might be, to take instructions from the
Lord Chamberlain, to submit patterns of masks and altera-
tions of plays, and to obtain payment of expenses.® Blagrave
himself had a house at Bedwyn in Wiltshire, and couriers
were sometimes sent after him when his presence in London
was urgently needed.^ Upon his entrance into office the
officers were called together ‘ for colleccion and showe of
eche thinge prepared for her Maiesties regall disporte and
recreacion as also the store wherewith to ffurnish, garnish
and sett forth the same ; wherof, as also of the whole state
of the office the L. Chamberlayne according to his honours
appointment was throughly advertised The store was
also carefully perused and the inventories checked upon the

‘ Feuillerat, Eliz. 164.

* A Declared Account for 14 Feb. 1578 to 14 Feb. 1579 is in Blagrave's
name.

* Feuillerat, Eliz, 212, 218, 238, 247, 267, 277, 295, 296, 297, 298,
299. 300.

* Ibid. 192, 266, 277, 297 301. ^ Ibid. 191.

86

THE COURT

death of John Arnold the Yeoman, and the appointment on
29 January 1574 of Walter Fish in his room.^ The Accounts
continue to include allowances for the diet of the Clerk as
well as that of the Master. 1 have no doubt that Bls^rave
was quite capable of drawing them both ; but it is also likely
enough that some unestablished person undertook the duties
of ‘ Acting ’ Clerk. If so, this was most probably Bryan
Dodmer, who was very useful on financial business during
1573-4 and 1574-5. Aiter this year he disappears from the
Accounts and his place is apparently taken by John Drawater.
William Bowll, the ex-Deputy-Yeoman and silkweaver, and
Thomas Giles, the haberdasher, in spite of their complaints
against the Office, continue to supply it with goods.*

The general character of the Accounts, both under Fortescue
and Sackford, and under Blagrave, is much the same as
that of the one, already analysed, for 1571-2. Periods of
activity, mainly at Christmas and Shrovetide, still alternate
with periods of quiescence, stock-taking, and ‘ airing ’. Occa-
sionally the Office has to bestir itself to accompany a progress.*
Some unusually detailed entries in 1576-7 give interesting
information as to the rates of wages ordinarily paid to work-
men. The head tailor got 2od. for each day or night, and
other tailors I2d. Carpenters got i6d. ; the Porter and other
attendants X 2 d. Painters, haberdashers, property-makers,
joiners, carvers, and wire-drawers were paid ‘ at sundrie
rates ’. In a later year, 1579-80, the first and second painter
got 2 S. and 2od, respectively, and the rest iM. The first
wire-drawer got 2Qd., and the rest ifd.* The payments for
night-work really represent double wages for overtime, since
we learn from Buggin and Blagrave that the length of a night
was reckoned at about half that of a day. The workmen
who waited on the mask before Montmorency in 1572 got
extra rewards, because they ‘ had no tyme to eat theyer
supper ’ ; and while the banqueting-house was building Bryan
Dodmer had to buy bread and cheese ‘ to serve the plasterers
that wroughte all the nighte and mighte not be spared nor
trusted to go abrode to supper ’.® An important function of
the Office consisted in ‘ calling together of sundry players
and pervsing, fitting and reformyng theier matters (otherwise
not convenient to be showen before her Maiestie) Dodmer
paid 405. in 1574-5 for ‘ paynes in pervsing and reformyng

Patent in Feuillerat, Elix. 73 ; cl. 191, Collier, i. 227, and Variorum,
iii. 499 -

* Feuillerat. Elit. 197, 204, 2x2, 228, 247, 268, 277. 291, 300.

* Ibid. 182, 225. * Ibid. 256, 321.

* Ibid. 162, 163. * Ibid. 191.

THE REVELS OFFICE 87

of playes sundry tymes as neede required for her Maiestie’s
lyking and it is a pity that the name of the payee is left
blank in the Account.^ When the plays had been chosen
and knocked into shape, they had to be rehearsed. Now and
then they were taken before the Lord Chamberlain for this
purpose ; but as a rule the rehearsals went on in the presence
of the officers at St. John’s. Here were a ‘ greate chambere
where the workes were doone and the playes rezited a store-
house, and the mansions of the officers. The Clerk had an
office with a nether room next the yard.^ Fish complains
of the inconvenience of having only one room for every kind
of artificer to work in. Items for yellow cotton to line * the
Monarkes gowne ’ and for his jerkin and hose perhaps point
to the use of a lay figure." One Nicholas Newdigate was
extremely useful in hearing and training the children who
frequently performed.^ Naturally these gave a good deal of
trouble. At Shrovetide 1574 of them were employed
for a mask at Hampton Court. They had diet pnd lodging
at St. John’s, ‘ whiles thay learned theier partes and jcsturcs
meete for the mask *. They were taken from Paul’s Wharf
to Hampton Court in a barge with six oars and two ‘ tylt
whirreys *. They arrived on Monday, but the Queen would
not see them until the Tuesday, and they were lodged for
the two nights at Mother Spare’s at Kingston. An Italian
woman and her daughter were employed to dress their heads.
When they got back to London on Ash-Wednesday, ‘ sum
of them being sick and colde and hungiy ’, fire and victuals
were provided at Blackfriars. Each child received a reward
of Trouble was caused also sometimes by the behaviour
of the courtiers who took part in festivities. Six horns
garnished with silver were provided at a cost of 185., for
a mask of hunters on i January 1574, and there is a note
in the Account that these horns * the maskers detayned and
yet dooth kepe them against the will of all the officers *.
This sort of difficulty was traditional. It was already per-
plexing the worthy Gibson more than half a century before.®
That the practice of lending out the Revels stuff was not
wholly abandoned is shown by an application from Magdalen
College, Oxford, to Tilney in 1592 for furniture for a play.*^
Finance was also a cause of trouble. On his appointment
in 1573 Blagrave succeeded in obtaining a ‘ prest ’ of £200

to begin the year upon. In 1574 he did the same, but not

* Ibid. 242. * Ibid. 179, 186, 277, Table III.

® Ibid. 185. * Ibid. 204, 219, 268.

® Ibid. 218. ® Ibid. 202 ; c£. Tudor Revels, 5.

’ Hist, MSS. IV. 300.

88

THE COURT

until Dodmer had applied in vain to the Lord Chaniberlaini
the Lord Treasurer, and Mr. Secretary Walsingham, and was
finally * after long attendauiice (and that none of the afore*
named coulde get the Queenes Maiestie to resolve therin)
dryven to trouble her Maiestie himselfe and by special peticion
obtayned as well the grawnt for cc'* in prest as the dettes to
be paid At the end of each year there were formalities
and delays to be gone through before the bills could be paid.
The accounts had to be made up, to be passed by the
auditors, and to be declared before the Lord Treasurer and
the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then a royal warrant had
to be obtained for a privy seal, then the privy seal itself,
and finally actual payment at the Exchequer. All these
processes necessitated constant fees and gratuities. In 1579
the estimated charges for audit and payment amounted to
£8. For his considerable financial services in 1574-5 Bryan
Dodmer demanded £13 6s. 8d., but this was ruthlessly cut
down by the ofiicers to £6 13^. 4^. They in their turn found
the auditor disallowing a small payment because it had been
entered in the books after the sum had been cast, and was
not properly certified. Dodmer had advanced the money,
but he could not be repaid until the following year.^

A letter of 8 April 1577 from Leicester to Burghley reminds
him that a certain suit of Sir Jerome Bowes and others
* touching plays ’ had been referred to them, together with
the Lord Chamberlain, by the Queen for consideration. They
had ‘ myslyked of the p)erpetuytie they sutors desierd but
a report still had to be made.^ There is nothing to show the
nature of this ‘ suit but it is not unnatural to conjecture
that it arose in some way out of the vacancy in the Master-
ship. No more, however, is heard of Sir Jerome Bowes in
this connexion. It was not until seven years after Benger’s
death that Blagrave met with the rebuff of finding himself
passed over in favour of an outsider, and reduced to his
former position of Clerk, with its subordinate duties and its
miserable allowances for the ‘ ordynary grene cloth, paper,
incke, counters, deskes, standishes and so forth. The new
Master was Edmund Tilney, who had dedicated to Elizabeth,
in 1568, a dialogue on matrimony under the title of The
Flower of Friendship. Tilney was a connexion of Lord
Howard of Effingham, to whose influence at Court he probably
owed his appointment. His patent is dated on 24 July 1579,
but the fee was to run from the previous Christmas, and

» Feuillerat, Elix. 227, 247, 277, 300, 310, 457.

* App. D, No. xxxiii.

THE REVELS OFFICE

89

he may therefore have formally assumed his duties at that
period. His signature is attached with those of Blagrave and
the other officers to the Accoun? for the whole of the period
from 14 February 1578 to 31 October 1579, but the details
do not afford any evidence that he topk a personal share in
the work of the Office.^ In 1581 he was spoken of as a possible
ambassador to Spain, but this does not appear to have led
to anything. 2

Only a few detailed Accounts belonging to Tilney’s Master-
ship are in existence. These are made up regularly from
each I November to the following 31 October. They do not
disclose any noteworthy change in the previous routine of the
Office. On 8 August 1580 Thomas Sackford, a Master of
the Requests, and Sir Owen Hopton, the Lieutenant of the
Tower, were instructed by the Council to take a view of the
Revels stuff upon the appointment of the new Master, and
to deliver inventories of the same to Tilney. Accordingly,
a charge of 40^. ‘ for the ingrossinge of three paire of indentid
inventories ’ appears in the Account.^ Blagrave appears to
have sulked at first, for in 1581 the employment of a pro-
fessional scribe to make up the accounts was explained by
the absence of a clerk. The auditors, very properly, made
a marginal note of surprise, and Blagrave resumed his duties.^
In 1582-3 considerable repairs were required at the Revels
Office, owing to the fact that a chamber which formed part of
Blagrave’s lodging had fallen down. An office and a chamber
for the Master seem for a time to have been provided at
Court during the attendance of the Master, and warmed with
billets and coals at the expense of the Revels, but by 1587-8
they had been crowded out, and an allowance of 10s. was
made for the hire of rooms.® Another entry for 1582-3 marks
an epoch of some importance in the history of the Elizabethan
stage. On 10 March 1583 Tilney was summoned to Court
by a letter from Mr. Secretary [Walsingham] ‘ to choose out
a companie of players for her Mai>5tie ’. Horse hire and
charges on the journey cost him 205.® Outside the Accounts
there is one document of considerable interest belonging to
the early years of Tilney’s rule. This is a patent, dated
24 December 1581, and giving to the Master of the Revels
such a ‘ commission ’ or grant of exceptional powers over the
subjects of the realm, as had been stated in the Memoranda

^ Feuillerat, Eliz, 55 (text of patent), 285, 302, 310, 312 ; Variorunit
iii. 57 ; Chalmers, 482 ; Collier, i. 230, 235 ; Dramatic Records, 2.

* Dij^es, 359. 3 Feuillerat, Eliz, 330.

* Ibid. 434. « Ibid. 354. 358, 370, 381, 391.

* Ibid. 359.

90

THE COURT

of 1573 to be eminently desirable in the interests of the
ofl 5 ce.^ The Master is authorized to take and retain such
workmen ‘ at competent wa^s \ and take such ‘ stuff, ware,
or merchandise *, * at price reasonable *, together with such
‘ carriages ’, by land and by water, as he may consider to be
necessary or expedient for the service of the Revels. He or
his deputy may commit recalcitrant persons to ward. He
may protect his workmen from arrest, and they are not to
be liable to forfeit if their service in the Revels obliges them
to break outside contracts for piece-work. The licensing
powers also conferred upon the Master by this patent are
considered elsewhere. ^

Tilney’s accession to office coincided with the beginning of
the period of heightened splendour in Court entertainments,
due to the negotiations for Elizabeth’s marriage with the Duke
of Anjou. ^ A magnificent banqueting-house was built at
Whitehall, and Sidney, Fulke Greville, and others, equipped
as the Foster Children of Desire, besieged the Fortress of
Perfect Beauty in the tilt-yard. One might have expected to
find a considerably larger expenditure accounted for by the
officers of the Revels. But this was not so, except for the
one winter of Anjou’s visit. The cost of the Office, which in
1571-3 had grown to about £1,500 a year, rapidly fell again.
In 1573^-4 it was about £670; in 1574-5 about £580; and
thereafter it generally stood at not more than from £250 to
£350. In 1581-2, however, it reached £630.^ It is probable
that the figures do not point to any real reduction of ex-
penditure, but only mean that, after the experience of John
Fortescue, the Master of the Wardrobe, as Acting Master of
the Revels in 1572-3, it was found economical to supply the
needs of the Office, to a greater extent even than in the past,
through the organization of the Wardrobe and the Office of
Works, instead of by the direct purchase of goods or employ-
ment of labour in the open market. Stowe records, for
example, that the banqueting-house of 1581 cost £1,744
but no part of this appears in the Revels Account, although
the banqueting-house of 1572 had cost the Office £224 6 s, lod,^
Probably it was all met by the Office of Works. About 1596
a further reform in the interests of economy was attempted,
by the establishment of a fixed annual allowance for expenses,
including the ‘ wages ’ or * diet ’ hitherto allowed to the
officers for each day or night of actual attendance at ‘ airings *
or at the rehearsals or performances of plays. The last pay*

* See text in App. D, No. Ivi. 2 Qf ^

^ Cf. ch. i. * Feuillerat. Ehz. Table II.

‘ Stowe, A finales, 689 ; Feuillerat, Eliz. i68 ; cf. ch. i.

THE REVELS OFFICE

91

ment under the old system was made on 30 May 1594 by
a warrant to Tilney for a sum of £311 2s. 2d, in respect of
works and wares and ofl&cers’ >!^ages for 1589-92, together
with an imprest of £100 for 1592-3.^ The next warrant was
made out on 25 January 1597, and. directed the payment
of £200 for 1593-6, together with an annual payment of
£66 6s. Sd.f * as composition for defraying the charges of the
office for plays only, according to a rate of a late reformation
and composition for ordinary charges there The amount
of £311 2$, 2d. paid for the three years 1589-92 is so small
as to suggest that the distinction between * ordinary ’ and

* extraordinary * charges may have already existed during
the period, and may thus have preceded the reduction of

* ordinary ’ charges to a ‘ composition The warrant of
25 January 1597, however, never became operative. There
is an entry of it in the Docquet Book of the Signet Office,
and in the margin are the notes * Remanet : neuer passed
the Seales ’ and ‘ Staid by the Lord Thr easorer : vacat
Fortunately we are able to trace the causes which led to this
interposition by Burghley. It will perhaps be remembered
that Edward Buggin, in his Memorandum of 1573, had con-
sidered a possible reform of the administration of the Revels
Office on lines very similar to those now adopted, and had
decided that it was impracticable.^ Doubtless the same view
was held by the officers of 1597, and after the manner of
permanent officials they took steps to ensure that it should
be impracticable. Disputes arose between the Master and
the inferior officers as to the distribution of the sum allowed
for ordinary charges, and, pending a settlement of these, all
payments out of the Office were suspended. The result was
a memorial to Burghley from the * creditors and servitors ’
of the Revels, which called attention to the fact that five
years’ arrears due to them were withheld ‘ only throughe the
discention amoungest the officers

This was in the first instance referred to Tilney for his
observations, and he writes :

All that I can saye Is, that /Aer Is a Composition layd vppow me by
Quens mat>5te and signed by her self, rated verbatimly by certayn
orders sett down by my Lord Treasurer vnder his Lordshippes Hand,
whervnto I haue appealed, because the other officers will nott be
satisficed vfith ayni reason, whert<> I am now teyd & nott vnto there
friuilus demandes. Wherefore lett /Aem sett down In writtinge the

> S. P. D. Eliz. ccxlviii, p. 512,

* Ibid, cclxii, p. 351. The calendar does not, however, note the mar-
ginalia to the docqnet referred to below. ^ Cf . p. 82 .

* Tudor Revels, 64, and FeuUlerat, 417, from Lansd, MS. 83, f. 170,

92

THE COURT

speciall Causes why they shuld reiect tht forsayd orders and iht Com-
position gronded theron^ Then am I to reply vnto the same as I can^
for tell then fAes petitioners can liott be satisfied.

Ed. Tyllney.

The document was then referred to Burghley, with the
following summary of its contents :

5 November 1597.

They shewe that theie are vnpaid theise five yeares last past for
wares deliuered and service done in tht office of tht Revells, throughe
th% dissencion amongest tht officers to their greate hinderance theise
deare yeares beeinge poore men.

Vppon theire mocion to tht master of tht office, his answere is,
that tht faulte is not in him, but he is redy to satisfie them all such
allowances as are dew vnto them, either by yowr Lordshippes former
order, or in righte theie can challeng, vppon wAtch order tht master
doth wholly relie but tht other reiect tht same.

for that thett is no licklyhood of theirt agreement, whereby
tht petecioners may be satisfied, Theie Humbly pray yonr
hordshippe to Command som order for tht releving theirt poore
estates.

Burghley then gave this direction :

One of the Awditonrs of the prest with one of the Barons of tht
Eschecqr to heare the officers of the Revels, and thes petitioners,
and either to ende the questions betwene them, or to certefie theyre
opinions.

W. Burghley.

The document is then further endorsed with the report of
Burghley’s referees :

quin to Januarii 1597 [1S9J].

Pleaseth it your good Lordeship to be advertized that, after longe
travaile and paines taken betwene the Master of the Revells and
the Officers thereof, It is agreed by o«r entreaty that, out of the
by yeare allowed for Fees or wage for their attendaunces, the
Master of the RevelWj shall yearely allowe and paye the severall
Somes of mony vnd^ written, viz.

To the Clarke Comptroller of that office . . . viij^*

To the Yeoman of the Revelles viij^^

To the Groome of the Office xl*

To the Porter of St. Johns xx*

whereof xx*, parcel! of the saide viij^* allowed to the
yeoman, is to be aunswered by the same yeoman
after this yeare to the said Groome.

Which yf it may stande with your good Lordshippes lyking,
wee truste will bring contynuall quietnes and dutifull service
to her maiV5tie.

John Sotherton*
Jo. Conyers.

THE REVELS OFFICE

93

Hereon Burghley comments :

My desire is to be better satisfied hpwe the Credito^rs shall be payd.

W. Burghley.

Here the minutes stop, but Burghley must have been
satisfied and must have allowed the arrangement to go for-
ward, for on 10 January 1598 a new warrant was issued,
in the place of that previously stayed, for the £200 due on
account of 1 593-6, and for the annual ^^66 65. M., ‘by way
of composition for defraying the ordinary services of plays
only Apparently the fixed rate was made retrospective
for i593*~6.^ Two or three points of interest arise from the
document just printed. It seems curious that no share in
the composition is awarded to the Clerk. Possibly Blagrave,
old and disappointed, was in practical retirement at Bedwyn ;
but in that case he would naturally have appointed and
claimed allowance for a deputy. On the other hand, a new
post, of Groom of the Revels, corresponding to that of Groom
of the Tents which had existed since 1544, seems to have
been created, probably for the benefit of Thomas Clatter-
bocke, who, unless two generations are involved, had served
the Office continuously as a foreman tailor since 1548 ; ^ and
it is to be gathered that some redistribution of duties and
emoluments between the Yeoman and the Groom was in
progress. The Porter of St. John’s Gate, also, now seems to
be classed as an officer, or perhaps rather a ‘ servitor of the
Revels ; and in this post John Dauncy has been succeeded
since 1588-9 by John Griffeth.^ The sum of £66 6$. 8d.
allowed for ordinary charges was evidently made up of £40
for officers’ ‘ wages ’ and £26 6s, Sd. for tradesmen’s bills and
miscellaneous expenses. This last sum is so small as to
suggest that the Office had been relieved both of the emption
of stuffs and of the payment of tailors and property-makers.
After paying £19 to the inferior officers, Tilney had £21 left
for his own ‘ wages ’. This amount is out of proportion to
the double rate, of 4s, as against the 2s. paid to each inferior
officer, which the Master had been accustomed to receive for
each day’s or night’s attendance. But the accounts for
1582-3, 1584-5, and 1587-8 show that the attendances made
by Tilney, who possibly exercised a much more detailed
supervision of his Office than either Benger or Cawarden had
attempted, were far in excess, during those years, of those
of his subordinates. Every officer attended for the twenty

‘ 5 . P. D, Eliz. cclxvi, p. 5.

* Feuillerat, Edw. and M, 29 ; cf. p. 100. * Feuillerat, 394, 417.

94

THE COURT

annual days of ' airing ' and for the actual nights, which were
sixteen in 1582-3, and fourteen in 1584-5 and 1587-8, of the
performances. In addition, ^filney attended for 106, 117, and
1 16 days respectively, and the other officers for only 60, 51,
and 28 (in the case of the Yeoman, 38) days respectively, in
these three years. ^ Probably he liked to be at Court, whether
there was much to do or not. The average allowances for
wages had therefore been about £29 10^. a year for the
Master and £y 10s, a year for each inferior officer, so that
the composition was by no means unduly in Tilney’s favour.
Moreover, he had introduced a practice of taking to Court
a doorkeeper and three other attendants, and charging i^. a
day as diet for each. Probably these were his personal
servants, and he got no further allowance for them under
the composition. The precedence of the Master of the Revels
at Court was fixed by a certificate of the Heralds in 1588,
which directed that in the procession to St. Paul’s for a thanks-
giving after the Armada he should walk with the Knights
Bachelor. 2

Of course, the ‘ wages ’ dealt with by the composition and
charged to the Revels Account were quite distinct from the
‘ fees ’ payable to the officers out of the Exchequer in virtue
of their patents. These had been settled in Cawarden’s time,
and, so far as the inferior officers were concerned, do not
appear to have been varied since. The Clerk Comptroller
was entitled to 8d. a day, together with four yards of woollen
cloth, worth 6s. Sd. each, from the Wardrobe. In practice,
however, the livery had been replaced by a money allowance
of 265. 8d. charged half on the Revels and half on the
Tents.® The Clerk had 8d. a day, and a money payment
from the Treasury of 24s. a year in lieu of livery ; the Yeoman
6d. a day, and a livery * such as Yeomen of the household
have ’ at the Wardrobe. The Master’s fee, alike in the patents
of Cawarden, Benger, and Tilney, is given as £10. But Tilney,
according to a statement made by bis successor about 1611,
received £100 ‘ for a better recompence ’.^ In addition to fee
and wages, each of the officers was entitled under his patent
to an official residence. The Master held his place * cum
omnibus domibus mansionibus regardis proficuis iuribus liber-
tatibus et advantagiis eidem officio quovismodo pertinentibus
sive spectantibus vel tali officio pertinere sive spectare de-
bentibus ’. The Clerk Comptroller could claim a house, ‘ ubi

» Feuillerat, 352, 360, 367, 372, 379, 382.

* 5. P. D. cclxxix. 86. ® Fcuillerat. 108.

• Chalmers, 486, 490 ; S. P. D. Jac. /, Ixv. 2. The fee lists (cf. p. 29)
confirm this, sometimes adding ‘ diet in court ’.

THE REVELS OFFICE

95

paviliones . . . positi sunt aut erunt ’ to be assigned by the
Master of the Tents; the Clerk, one at the staura of the
Revels or the Tents, to be assigned by the Master of one or
other Office ; the Yeoman ‘ one sufficient house or mancion
such as hereafter shall be assigned to him * for the keeping
of the vestures. Cawarden had provided these houses at the
Blackfriars and had taken allowances in his accounts of £io
for his own and £5 each for those of his three subordinates,
as well as one of £6 13^. 4^. for the work and store rooms of
the Office.^ After his death suitable lodgings were available
at St. John’s. During the interregnum the Master’s lodging
was utilized as a supplementary storehouse. It was con-
sequently not ready for Tilney on his appointment, and he
was allowed £13 6s. 8d. a year for lodgings elsewhere.^ An
undated letter from him at the Revels Office to Sir William
More, complaining of the conduct of a neighbour, suggests
that he found these at the Blackfriars, and here he seems to
have remained, at any rate until 1582.® But by 1586-7 he
had moved to St. John’s, where he occupied not his proper
lodging but that of the Comptroller, for which he paid £16
a year. This we learn from a careful survey made at that
date by Thomas Graves, Surveyor of the Office of Works.'*
He was comfortably housed enough, for he had thirteen
chambers, with a parlour, hall, kitchen, stable and other
appurtenances, and a ‘ convenient garden *. The Clerk had
eleven rooms and a stable, and the Yeoman seven and a barn.
The addition of the Master’s lodging to the space available
for official purposes had presumably removed the difficulties
of accommodation of which Fish had complained in 1574.
In addition to the * Great Hall ’ and a ‘ great chamber ’,
there were a cutting house and three ‘ woorking housez ’
below the hall. It may be added that there had been some
changes during Tilney’s Mastership, both of Clerk Comptroller
and of Yeoman. On 15 October 1584 William Honing was

‘ Feuillerat, 108. Ibid. 310, 463.

3 Hisi. MSS vii. 661 ; Feuillerat, 467.

• Feuillerat, 47. Owing to the omission of Burghley’s title in the address
of the report, I misdated it m Tudor Revels, 20. The history of St. John's
is given by W. P. Griffith, An Architectural Notice of St. John's Priory,
Clerkenwell (i London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans, iii. 157) ; A. W.
Clapham, St. John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell (St, Paul’s Ecclesiological
Soc. Trans, vii. 37). It was a Pnory of the Knights Hospitallers, founded
c. 1 100, and enlarged in the fifteenth century. The Gatehouse, which still
stands, was rebuilt by Prior Thomas Doewra in 1504. After the dissolu-
tion in 1540, the stones of the church were used for Somerset House, and
the rest granted to Dudley. Mary resumed it and refounded the Priory.
After the second dissolution by Elizabeth, the property remained in the
hands of the Crown.

THE COURT

96

appointed Comptroller in place of Edward Buggin,^ On
25 June 1596, Honing having resigned, Edmund Pakenham was
appointed as from 29 SepterAber 1595.^ The last Yeoman of
the reign was Edward Kirkham. His patent, in succession
to Walter Fish, then dead, is dated on 28 April 1586.® But
it refers to his ‘ service done in the Revels ’, and it is clear
from the account for 1582-3 that he was already employed
during that year, probably as deputy to Fish, in whose place
he signed the book.^ Fish signed that for 1580-1, and that
for 1581-2 is missing. Kirkham’s activities as a member of
the syndicate formed to finance the Chapel plays in 1601 are
a matter for discussion elsewhere.®

Tilney remained Master of the Revels until his death on
20 August 1610. But with the new reign he appears to
have exercised most of his functions through his nephew,
Sir George Buck, as his deputy and prospective successor.
Buck had been in the Cadiz expedition of 1596, and was not
improbably the Mr. Buck who carried dispatches for Cecil to
Middelburgh in the Low Countries and afterwards in England
during the autumn of 1601.® At the funeral of Elizabeth he
received livery as an Esquire of the Body, probably extra-
ordinary.’ Hopes of the Mastership seem to have been held
out to him as early as 1597, to the despair of another Esquire
of the Body, John Lyly, the dramatist, who considered that
he had claims upon the reversion to the Mastership, and
pretty clearly regarded the bestowal of it uoon another as
a distinct breach of faith on the part of the Queen. Several
letters of his referring to the matter are preserved at Hatfield
and elsewhere. The earliest and most important of these is
dated 22 December 1597 and addressed to Sir Robert Cecil.
Herein Lyly says :

‘ I haue not byn importunat, that thes 12 yeres mth vn wearied
pacienc have entertayned the pr(?roguing of her mai>5ties promises,
wAich if in the 13 may conclud wf/h the Parlement, I will think the
greves of tymes past but pastymes . . . Offices in Reuersion are fore-
stalld, in possession ingrost, & that of the Reuells countenanced upon
Buck, wherein the Justic of an oyre shewes his affection to the keper
& partialty to the sheppard, a french fauor.'

Patent in Feuillerat, 60.

* Patent in Feuillerat, 63. 3 Ibid. 74.

* Ibid. 360. 3 Cf. ch. xii.

* Hatfield MSS. xi. 359, 379, 380. The ‘ Mr. Buck * implicated in the
Essex rebellion of 1601 (Hist. MSS. xi. 4. 10) was Francis Buck (Hatfield
MSS. xi. 214).

’ Lord Chamberlain* s Records, 554. Can he also have been a Gentleman
of the Chapel ^ A Gentleman vras sworn in * in Mr. Buckes roome * on
2 July 1603, just after he became acting Master (Rimbault, 6).

THE REVELS OFFICE

97

To the Queen herself Lyly wrote :

' I was entertayned yowr Maie5tie!| servant by yowr owne gratious
ffavour, stranghthened with condicions, that I should ay me all my
courses att the Revells (I dare not saye, with a promise, butt a hope-
ffull Item, of the Reversion) ; ffor the which, theis tenn yeares,
I haue attended, with an vnwearyed patience, and I knowe not whatt
crabb tooke mee ffor an oyster, that, in the middest of the svnnshine
of your gratious aspect, hath thrust a stone betwene the shelles, to
eate mee alyve, that onely lyve on dead hopes/

The 'date of this petition is probably 1598, since a second
letter to Cecil, dated g September 1598, specifies the same
period of * ten yeres *, during which Lyiy had had ‘ nothing
applied to my wantes but promises On 27 February 1601,
a third letter to Cecil, asking for his aid in obtaining a grant
out of property forfeited after the Essex conspiracy, suggests
that ‘ ^ter 13 yeres servic and suit for the Revells, I may
turne all my forces & frends to feed on the Rebells This
was written in connexion with a second petition to the Queen,
in which occurs the following passage :

* It pleased your Mai^5tie to except* against Tentes and Toyles.
I wishe, that ffor Tentes I might putt in Tenementes : soe should
I bee eased with some Toyles ; some landes, some goodes, ffyncs,
or fforffeytures, that should ffall, by the just ffall of these most ffalce
Traytours, that seeinge nothinge will come by the Revells, I may
praye vppon Rebells. Thirteen yeares, your Highnes Servant, butt
yett nothinge . . . ’ ^

The general drift of these documents is fairly clear. It
would seem that Lyly received promises of advancement from
Elizabeth about 1583, probably as a result of the success
of his plays ; that in 1588 he was ‘ entertained the queen’s
servant ’, with a more or less authorized expectation of place
in the Revels ; that in 1597 his claims were set aside in favour
of Buck ; and that, after unavailing protests, he made the best
of the situation and attempted to obtain what compensation
he could for his disappointment. I find some confirmation of
the view that about 1588 Lyly came to be regarded, possibly
on account of the aid rendered by his pen to the bishops
against Martin Marprelate, as having some right of succession
to a place at Court, in an allusion of Gabriel Harvey, who in
his Advertisement for Papp-Hatcheit, dated 5 November 1589,
but not published until it was included in his Pierce's

The letters are printed in full in Bond, Lyly, i. 64, 68, 70, 378, 392.
395. A contemporary note by Sir Stephen Powle to a copy of the 1601
appeal says, ‘ He was a suter to be Mr. of the Reucllcs and tentes and
Toyles, but eauer crossed

2220-1 H

THE COURT

98

Supererogation of 1593, says of Papp-Hatchett, who is almost
certainly Lyly, ‘ He might a^^truly forge any lewd or villanous
report of any one in England ; and for his labour challenge
to be preferred to the Clerkship of the whetstone * ; and
again, ‘ His knavish and foolish malice palpably bewrayeth
itself in most odious actions ; meet to garnish the foresayd
famous office of the whetstone The actual phrasing of
Lyly’s letters is, of course, characteristically obscure. It is
possible that the ‘ keper ’ referred to in the first of them
is the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, to whom, if Collier
may be trusted, Buck sent, in 1605, a copy of a poem called
AA<I>N12 n0AT2TE<hAN02, with some lines referring to an
obligation of long standing towards his patron. ^ The allusion
to * Tentes and Toyles * may mean that, after giving up hope
of the Mastership of the Revels, Lyly had turned his thoughts
to the Mastership of the Tents and Toils, the actual holder
of which, in 1601, Henry Sackford, had been appointed to
the Tents as far back as 1359, must therefore have been
an oldish man ; or possibly that, if he could not have the
higher place, Lyly would have been content with the reversion
of one of the two subordinate appointments, the Clerkship
or the Clerk Comptrollership, which the Revels shared with
the Tents.^

I may complete the story by pointing out that Buck, no
less than Lyly, was making interest with Cecil. As a con-
nexion of the Howards, he had of course a powerful influence
behind him, and after the death of Nicasius Yctswiert, French
Secretary and Clerk of the Signet, Lord Howard of Effingham
had written to Cecil on 28 April 1595^:

‘ In favour of Buck, whom Her Majesty, talking with John
Stanhope, herself named, showing a gracious disposition to do him
good, and think him fit, as sure he is, for one of the two offices of
M*". Necasius, that is called unto God's mercy. For the French tongue
he can do it very well to serve her Majesty.'

Four years later, on i June 1599, Buck himself wrote to the
Secretary ^ :

‘ I understood by a friend of mine, not many months since, that
you were very well affected to mine old long suit, and of your own
disposition offered to move the Queen in my behalf. Ever since
I reckoned myself in your good favour till yesterday that I heard

‘ Grosart, Harvey, ii. 211. 2 Collier, i. 361.

3 The conjecture of R. W. Bond (Lyly, i. 41) that Lyiy was actually
Clerk Comptroller is rendered untenable by our complete knowledge of the
succession to that post ; cf. Tudor Revels, 60, and Feuillerat, Lyly, 194,
who shows that Lyly was the Queen's * servant * as Esquire of the Body.

^ Hatfield MSS. v. 189. 6 Ibid. ix. 190.

THE REVELS OFFICE

99

you had given youi goodwill to another, and besides had persuaded
one of my chief est friends to be solicitor for him. My interest therein
accrued out of frank almoin, and therefore I can claim no estate but
during pleasure, yet I hoped, as other poor true tenants do, not to
be turned out so long as I performed my honest duties.’

This may reasonably be taken as referring to the Mastership
of the Revels, and makes it clear that, whatever Elizabeth
had said or done in 1597, she had not given Buck any irre-
coverable promise. Very likely she never did. But early in
the new reign, on 23 June 1603, Buck received a formal grant
by patent of the reversion to Tilney.^ On the same day was
issued a new commission for the office, similar to that of
1581, but in Buck’s name instead of Tilney’s, from which it
is to be inferred that he had become the acting Master.^ On
23 July 1603 he was knighted.^ Tilney, however, continued
to render the accounts, which, with two exceptions, only exist
for the whole of the reign of James in a summary form. The
account for 1609-10 is by Tilney’s executor, Thomas Tilney ;
and from 1610-11 onwards Buck is accounting officer, and
in full enjoyment of the Mastership.^ One of the two detailed
accounts is Tilney’s for 1604-5, the other Buck’s for 1611-12.
These are made interesting by their schedules of Court per-
formances, the authenticity of which may now be regarded
as fairly vindicated.^ They show that the establishment
remained precisely upon its sixteenth-century lines. The
close of Elizabeth’s reign witnessed the termination by death
of Blagrave’s fifty-seven years’ service in the Revels.® William
Honing, the former Comptroller, returned to the Office as Clerk
in his room, under a patent made retrospective to 25 March
1603.’ He was ‘^till there, as was Edward Kirkham, the

‘ Patent Roll, i Jac. /, p. 24, m. 25 ; Text from seventeenth-century
copy in Dramatic Records, 14 ; doequet, dated 21 June, in S. P. D. Jac, /,
ii. p. 16. The terms, which follow those of earlier patents, are recited in
the Declared Accounts of the Office from 1610-11 onwards.

2 Patent Roll, i Jac. I, p. 24, m. 31. The date 1613 given by Chalmers,
491, is an error. An imperfect copy is in Dulwich MS. xviii 5, f. 51
(Warner, 338). The doequet in S. P. D. Jac. /, 11. p. 16, is dated 21 June.

^ Nichols, James, i. 215.

* He did not, however, get Tilney's fee of £100 (cf. p. 103) but only
the original £10 (Abstract of 1617) or, according to some of the manusenpt
fee lists (Stowe MSS. 574, f. 16 ; 575, f. 22^), £zo Tilney's monument
is m Streatham church (Lysons, Environs, 1. 365) but does not give the
exact date of his death. * Cf. App B.

® The pedigree in Middlesex Pedigrees (Harl, Soc. Ixv), 83, dates his
death in error 18 Jan. 1590, but it is interesting to note that his daughter
Mary married William, brother of Thomas Lodge. He was , buried at
Clerkenwell.

’ Patent in Dramatic Records, 9, dated 5 (? 15) June ; doequet of 10 June
in 5. P. D. Jac. /, ii. p. 14 ; draft of 30 May in S. P. D. Ehz. Addl. ix. 58.

lOO

THE COURT

Yeoman, in 1617.^ On the other hand there was a rather
rapid succession of Clerk Co/nptroUers : Edmund Pakenham
to 1605-6, Edmund Fowler from 1606-7 to 1608-9, William
Page in 1609-10, and Alexander Stafford from 24 April 1611
to 1617 or later .2 The Groom or Purveyor, like the Porter
of St. John’s, appears to have been a servitor and not an
officer by patent. During 1603-15 he was Stephen Baile,
who had succeeded Thomas Clatterbocke. The Porter of
St. John’s, during the same period, was Richard Prescot.^

The change of reign brought with it another change in the
financial arrangements for the office. The ‘ composition ’
introduced by Burghley in 1597 was abandoned, and hence-
forth the Master regularly received an imprest of £100 at the
beginning of each financial year, together with the balance
due on an account rendered by him for all charges since the
time of the last imprest. The total amount passing through
his hands was not large. During the earlier years of the
reign it varied from £150 to £300, and during 1611-15 from
£300 to £500.^ In 1617 the ‘ ordinary ’ issues for the Revels
were still estimated at £300.® Nor was there any special
need for ‘ extraordinary * issues, since the organization of the
masks, in which Jacobean Court extravagance centred, was
not entrusted to the Revels at all, but to some nominated
officer, under the direct supervision of the Lord Chamberlain
and the Master of the Horse, who received funds direct from
the Treasury for any expenditure which did not fall within
the provinces of the Wardrobe or the Office of Works.® The
Revels Officers continued indeed to give their personal atten-
dance on mask nights, and to charge for their diet accordingly.
But their actual responsibility for the entertainments appears
to have been limited to the supervision of the fittings, such
as the ‘ music house ’ in the hall or banqueting-house, and
in particular of the elaborate arrangements for lighting. The
wire-drawer’s bill is the chief outgoing represented in the
annual accounts. There is very little else except the personal
allowances for the officers and the Master’s four servants,
their office expenses and boat-hire, the audit and exchequer
costs, and occasional repairs to the * tiring-house ’ used for

> Abstract, 60.

* Dramatic Records, 63 ; Accounts, passim.

3 Accounts, passim. Feuillerat, 475, names Thomas Cornwallis as
Groom Porter in 1603. But there was no such post at the Revels. Corn-
wallis was Groom Porter of the Chamber.

^ Cunningham, 209, 217 ; Declared Accounts, passim ; S. P. D. Jac. I,
X. p. 178 ; xxxi. p. 410 ; Iviii. p. 652 ; Ixii. p. 17 ; Ixviii. p. no ; Collier,
»• 347» 3631 Devon, n8.

® Abstract, 8. ® Cf. ch. vi.

THE REVELS OFFICE loi

rehearsals and other parts of the premises which they occupied.
The Master charges diet for hi^nself and his men for every
day between All Hallows and Ash Wednesday, together with
an extra amount for each actual night of play or mask, and
for a varying number of days of tilting and running at the
ring and twenty days of ‘ airing * in the summer. The Comp-
troller, Clerk, and Yeoman get £13 6s, 8d, each and the
Groom £6 135. 4d, for the whole of their required attendance.
Beyond a stray property or garment here and there, there is
nothing spent on emptions of stuff or on tailors and the like.
I think it is clear that the result of the policy initiated by
Burghley had been to reduce the Revels, regarded as a branch
of the Household organization, to comparative insignificance.
Henceforward its domestic duties sink into the background
of the quasi-political functions given to the Master as stage
censor by the commissions of 1581 and 1603. But these
functions were peculiar to the Master, who carried them out
with the aid of his personal servants.^ The other Revels
officers had no claim to share in them, and though Tilney
and Buck built up a considerable income out of licensing
fees, which probably accounts for the discontinuance in Buck’s
case of the ‘ better recompense ’ of £100 granted by Elizabeth
to Tilney, no penny of these fees ever passed through the
Revels Accounts.

The slight increase of cost observable in course of time
is mainly due to charges for lodgings. The want of accom-
modation at Hampton Court in the winter of 1603-4 obliged
the officers to rent rooms at Kingston for a month at a cost
of £4.2 In 1607 a far more serious problem was presented
by the impending loss of St. John’s. This had remained
in Crown hands throughout Elizabeth’s time, although on
31 October 1601 we find John Chamberlain writing to Dudley
Carleton, ‘ The Quene sells land still and the house of St. Johns
is at sale ’.® James, however, after leasing the Gatehouse
for life to Sir Roger Wilbraham in 1604, carried out his
predecessor’s intention by selling the greater part of the

‘ Henslowe took receipts for licensing fees from Michael Bloomson,
John Carnab, Robert Hassard, William Hatto, Robert Johnson, William
Playstowe, Thomas and William Stonnard, Richard Veale, and Thomas
Whittle, ' men * of the Master of the Revels, between 1595 and 1602.
Johnson was of Leatherhead, where Tilney had a house. I regret to say
that on one occasion Henslowe thought fit to make a loan to William
Stonnard (Greg, Henslowe, i. 3, 5, 12, 28, 39, 40, 46, 54, 72, 83, 85, 103, 109,
1 16, 1 17, 121, 129, 132, 148, 160, 161 ; Dulwich MSS. i. 37).

* Declared Account.

* Chamberlain, 120. A proposal (c. 1589) for the establishment of an
‘ Accademye for the studye of Antiquitye and Historye ' (Anglta, xxxii.
261) contams a suggestion that its library might be housed in St. John’s.

102

THE COURT

Priory to Ralph Freeman on 9 May 1607.^ Presumably the
premises which had been a^?igned to the Revels were not
covered by this sale, for of thfese the King made a gift in the
same year to his cousin Esm6 Stuart, eighth Lord Aubigny.^
The Revels therefore had to be dispossessed. But the Office
had to be housed somewhere ; and the officers were all
entitled to official residences under the terms of their patents.
It was doubtless in connexion with this transaction that the
following memorandum, which is preserved amongst Sir Julius
Caesar’s papers and endorsed ‘ Mr. Tilney’s writinge touching
his Office ’, was drawn up.^

The Office of iht Revells Is noted to be one of iht Kinges M. 2 iiesX£S
standinge Offices, as are the Jewellhowsse, iht wardropp, the, Ordinance,
the Armorye, and the Tentes with the like Allowances everie wayes
that any of them haue.

WAfch Office of the Revells Consistethe of a wardropp and other
severall Roomes for Artifficers to worke in (viz. Taylors, Imbrotherers,
Properti makers, Paynters, wyerdrawers and Carpenters), togeather
with a Convenient place for the Rehearshalls and settinge forthe of
Playes and other Shewes for those Services.

In wAich Office the Master of the Office hath ever hadd a dwellinge
Howsse for him self and his Famelie, and the other Officers ar to
haue eyther dwellinge Howsses Assigned unto ^em by the Piaster (for
so goeth the wordes of ther Pattente^) or else a Rente for the same
as thei had before they Came unto St. Johnes.

For by ther Pattents, wAfch be all eyther new graunted or Con-
firmed by the King^5 MazVjtie, They ar Allowed as the Master Is to
haue cache of them a dwellinge Howsse with garden and Stable for
Terme of ther lyues, as ther Predicessors hadd (viz. within St. Johnes),
wAich Cannot well be taken from vs without good Consideration for
the same : or the lyke Allowance for Howssroome.

Elye Howsse Is possessed agayne by the Byshopp as I doe
heare.

But Sir Thomas Knevitt hath vnder neathe his keepershipp of
Whitehaull, dyvers howsses, as Hawnces and Baptistas with ij or
iij howsses more Appertayninge ther vnto, near vnto the olde Pallas
In Westminster wAich I doe doubte be all rented out by him for
Terme of his lyeffe.

The difficulty was met by a plan which had served before
in the history of the Revels. The officers were allowed to
provide their own lodgings, and to charge £ 1 ^ each for the pur-
pose in the Office account. A similar allowance [£ 20 ) was made

‘ 5. P. D. (22. xi. 04) ; I London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans,
hi- 157-

* The gift to Aubigny is recited in the Treasury warrants of 10 Nov. 1610
and 31 March 1611 for lodging allowances cited below.

3 Lansd. MS. 156, f. 368.

THE REVELS OFFICE 103

to the Master for the provision of an office.^ The actual
removal, so far as the office was concerned, took place in the
spring of 1608. The accounts Aiow expenses ‘ in providing
a place for th’office of the Revells ’ between 10 February and
the middle of April, and there is independent evidence that
on the loth of March, it was located next door to the White-
friars theatre.^ Tilney’s personal allowance first appears in
the account for 1608-9, and is made retrospective to Michael-
mas 1607, Perhaps the Clerk and Yeoman were not disturbed
quite so soon. Their allowances first appear in 1610-11, and
are retrospective to Hallowmas 1608.® It may be assumed
that the Comptroller’s lodging was treated as a charge on the
Tents. On Tilney’s death, Buck was allowed £30 to cover
both the Office and his own lodging, and the payment ante-
dated to Michaelmas 1608. He protested that he had in fact
to pay a rent of £50, and although Salisbury probably turned
a deaf ear, his appeal was allowed when his Howard con-
nexions, Suffolk and Northampton, became Treasury Com-
missioners in 1612, and the allowance was finally fixed at
£50.^ It should be added that Buck also secured in 1612-13,
and very likely in other years, a quite distinct allowance of
£16, under a warrant from the Lord Chamberlain to the
Treasurer of the Chamber, as compensation for the absence
of a lodging for him at a crowded Court during the winter
revels season.® The Office cannot have stayed long in the
Whitefriars, for on 24 August 1612 Buck dedicated a treatise
on The Third University in England to Sir Edward Coke
* from his Majesties office of the Revels, upon St. Peter’s
Hill This is an account of the seats of learning in London,

* 5 . P, D. Jac. I, xxviii, p. 391* The authority was given by a privy

seal. * Cf. ch. xvii.

* Cunningham, xxi, from Audit Office Enrolments, ii. 108. The authority
is a Treasury warrant to auditors of 10 Nov, 1610

* 5 . P. D. Jac. /, Ixv. 2, contains (1) a letter of i July 1611 from Buck
to Salisbury's secretary, Dudley Norton, asking for authority to be given
by privy seal and not a mere letter to the auditors, and enclosing (11) a letter
to Salisbury, putting his case and pleading that Tilney had ' besides
£100 for a better recompense which had not been continued to Buck,
(iii) a copy of a Treasury warrant to the auditors for the ;^3o, dated
31 March i6ii, and (iv) a draft of the privy seal asked for. Chalmers,
490, printed (ii) and (iii), and Cunningham printed a draft for (ii) from
Harl. MS. 6850 in Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 143. On 19 Dec. 1612 the Treasury
sent a warrant to the auditors to allow the £fio (Cunningham, xxii). But
Buck’s preference for a privy seal was sound, for at a later date Auditor
Beale complained that authority for the lodging allowances was wanting
{Dramatic Records, 84 ; Herbert, 129).

» Chamber Accounts. Similar expenses for earlier years were charged
in the Revels Accounts ; cf, p. 89.

* There was yet another change later. Herbert said after the Restora-

104 THE COURT

and was printed by Howes as an appendijt to the 1615 edition
of Stowe’s Annales, Chapter 47 is Of the Art of Revels^ and
is worth quoting : ’

‘ I might add herunto for a corollary of this discourse the Art of
Revels which requireth knowledge in Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic,
Philosophy, History, Music, Mathematics, and in other Arts (and all
more than I understand I confess) and hath a settled place within
this City. But because I have described it and discoursed thereof
at large in a particular commentary, according to my talent, I will
surcease to speak any more thereof : blazing only the Arms belonging
to it ; which are Gules, a cross argent, and in the first comer of the
scutcheon, a Mercury’s petasus argent, and a lion gules in chief or.’ ^

It is matter for deep regret that Buck’s ‘ particular com-
mentary ’ is lost. He made other contributions to letters,
writing commendatory verses to Thomas Watson’s EKATOM-
nA0IA {c. 1582) and to Camden’s Britannia (1607), and
a poem called AA^NIS n0AT2TE<I>AN02 (i6o5).2 His
History of the Life and Reigne of Richard III was pub-
lished posthumously in 1646.^

Reversions of the Mastership were granted during Buck’s
lifetime to Edward Glasscock in 1603, to John, afterwards
Sir John, Astley or Ashley on 3 April 1612, to Benjamin
Jonson on 5 October 1621, and to William Painter on 29 July
1622.^ His actual successor was Sir John Astley. On
30 March 1622 John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton,

‘ Old Sir George Buck, master of the revels, has gone mad
On 29 March 1622 a warrant was issued by the Lord Chamber-
lain to swear Astley in as Master, followed on 16 May by

tion (Dramatic Records, 39 ; Herbert, 108) that the Office had been ‘ time
out of minde * in the parish of St. Mary Bowe, in the ward of Cheap.
St. Peter’s Hill is divided between Queen Hithe and Castle Baynard wards.

» Chalmers, Apology, 531, 628, has an engraving from a block of the
Revels Office seal or stamp, as used by Thomas Killigrew under Charles II.
It has KiUigrew’s arms with the legend * Sigill: Offic: locor: Mascar:
Et Revell ; Dni : Reg.’

* Cf. p. 98. The verses to the Britannia are headed * Georgij Buc
Equitis aurati Reg[iorum] Sp[ectaculorum] C[uratoris] Heptastichon '.

3 This is sometimes ascribed to a younger Buck, but the manuscript
copy in Cott, MS. Tiberius, E. x, is dated from the Revels Office on
St. Peter’s Hill in 1619.

< Feuillerat, Lyly, 237; Dramatic Records, ii, 39; Herbert, 7, 102;
5 . P. D. Jac. I (cxxxii, p. 432). Chalmers, 492, says, ‘ Yet, this was not
old Ben, as it seemeth, who died in 1637, but young Ben, who died in
1635 ’. This seems rather improbable. Was Jonson already a suitor for
the post in i6oi, when Dekker wrote Satiromastix, iv. i. 244, ’Master
Horace ... I have some cossens Garman at Court, shall beget you the
reuersion of the Master of the Kings Reuels, or else be his Lord of Mis-
rule nowe at Christmas ’ ?

• P, D, Jac, /, cxxviii. 96.

THE REVELS OFFICE

105

a letter requiring Buck to deliver up the books and other
property of the Office.^ His deat|^ took place on 20 September
1623.* Astley almost immediately sold his office to Sir Henry
Herbert, whose tenure of it belongs to the history of the
Caroline stage.

• Murray, ii. 193, from Inner Temple MS. 515 ; cf. GjUier, i. 402 •
Gildersleeve, 64.

* Herbert, 67, 109.

IV

PAGEANTRY

[Bibliographical Note. A mass of material on the progresses is collected
in J. Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth (ed. 2, 1823) and Progresses of James J
(1828), wliich may be supplemented by W. Kelly, Royal Progresses and
Visits to Leicester (1884), and F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor
Age (1914). Most of the contemporary descriptions of entertainments
reprinted by Nichols will be found noticed in chh. xxiii, xxiv, and a more
complete itinerary than his is attempted in Appendix A with the help
of the dates of Pnvy Council meetings and the accounts of the Treasurer of
the Chamber, which he did not utilize. Most of the hosts of royalty can
be identified with the aid of the Victoria County Histories » and of other
local histories, to which some guide is afforded by J. P. Anderson, Book
of British Topography (1881), of which a new edition is looked for, C. Gross,
Bibliography of Municipal History (1897), and A. L. Humphreys, Handbook
to County Bibliography (1917). Three of the most important home counties
are described in J. Norden’s Middlesex (1593), Herts (1598), and Essex
(1840), and the main roads are surveyed at a date rather after the penod
in J, Ogilby, Britannia (1675), the progenitor of a long line of road-books.

On the Lord Mayor’s show, J. G. Nichols, London Pageants (1837), and
F. W. Fairholt, Lord Mayor's Pageants (1843-4) and The Civic Garland
(1845). niay be consulted ; and further details can be gleaned from C. M.
Clode, Memorials of the Guild of Merchant Taylors (1875) and Early History
of the Guild of Merchant Taylors (1888), and other publications of individual
guilds.

Elizabethan hunting is dealt with by D, H. Madden, The Diary of
Master William Silence (1897), There is no adequate history of the dance ;
the chapter by A. F. Sieveking in Shakespeare s England, ii. 437, and the
sources there cited may be consulted. The tilt has been recently dealt
with by F. H. Cripps-Day, The History of the Tournament (1918), and
R. C. Clephan, The Tournament, Its Periods and Phases (1919)* which
appeared after this chapter was written. Contemporary records are
collected by W. Segar, Honor Military and Civill (1602), and armature
is learnedly treated in J. Hewitt, Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe
(1855-60), and C. Ffoulkes, Armour and Weapons (1909).

R. Withington, English Pageantry (vol. i, 1918), also published since
this chapter was written, deals more fully with the origins and mediaeval
history of pageantry than with its Elizabethan examples.]

The tradition of pageantry had its roots deep in the Middle
Ages. But it made its appeal also to the Renaissance, of
which nothing was more characteristic than the passion for
colour and all the splendid external vesture of things ; while
the ranging curiosity of the Renaissance was able to stimulate
into fresh life the fading imaginative energies of the past,
weaving its new fancies from classical mythology, from epic
and pastoral, from the explorations of history and folk-lore,

PAGEANTRY

107

no less delightfully than incongruously, into the old mediaeval
warp of scripture and hagiology^and allegory. So that the
Tudor kings and queens came and went about their public
affairs in a constant atmosphere of make-believe, with a sibyl
lurking in every court-yard and gateway, and a satyr in the
boscage of every park, to turn the ceremonies of welcome
and farewell, without which sovereigns must not move, by
the arts of song and dance and mimetic dialogue, to favour
and to prettiness.

The fullest scope for such entertainments was afforded by
the custom of the progress, which led the Court, summer by
summer, to remove from London and the great palaces on
the Thames and renew the migratory life of earlier dynasties,
wandering for a month or more over the fair face of the land,
and housing itself in the outlying castles and royal manors,
or claiming the ready hospitality of the territorial gentry and
the provincial cities. This was a holiday, in which the
sovereign sought change of air and the recreation of hunting
and such other pastimes as the country yields.^ But it cannot
be doubted that it had also a political object, in the strengthen-
ing, by the give and take of gracious courtesies, of the bonds
of personal affection and loyalty upon which much of the
wisdom of Elizabeth’s domestic statecraft so securely rested.
And accordingly the procedure retained much of the solemnity
of a state function. The Queen went on horseback or in
a coach or litter, attended by her bodyguards and the great
officers of state, with the Master of the Horse leading her
bridle and a great noble carrying the sword before her.^ The
sheriff met her at the boundary of each county, and as she
entered a castle or a city the constables offered up their keys
and the corporations their maces, and received them again
at her hands. And with the Queen came the Household in
a body. Hall and Chamber and Stable, followed by a long
train of carts bearing the royal * stuff ’ which was destined
to supply the needs of the household offices, and to furnish

^ Thomas Herbert to Robert Cecil, 26 Aug. 1601 (Hatfield MSS. xi. 362) :

‘ Her Majesty, God be praised, liketh her journey, the air of this soil, and
the pleasures and pastimes showed her in the way, marvellous well ’ ;
cf. p. Ill (1577). In March 1581, Thomas Scot reported to Leicester
( 5 . P. D. cxlviii. 34) the scurrilous statement of one Henry Hawkins,

‘ that my Lord Robert hath had fyve children by the Queene, and she
never goethe in progress but to be delivered

* Machyn, 262, 267, describes the start from and return to London in
1561. Puttenham, iii. 22 (ed. Arber, 266), has a story of Elizabeth’s mirth
at one Serjeant Bendlowes, ‘ when in a progresse time comming to salute
the Queene in Huntingtonshire he said to her Cochman, stay thy cart
good fellow, stay thy cart, that I may speake to the Queene

io8 THE COURT

the often empty walls of temporary lodgings, where were
reproduced, if only on a lyiniature scale, the conventional
ordering of presence chamber, privy chamber, and the like,
which were the essentials of a royal dwelling.^ Careful
arrangements had, of course, to be made in advance ; on
the one hand for the maintenance of communications with
London and the transaction or postponement of business
during the absence of Queen and Council, and on the other
for the housing and provisioning of so great a multitude in
the country districts.* The latter had of old been the care
of a special group of Hall officers known as the Harbingers.*
These still exercised functions of detail. But the general
control, like so much else, had passed into the hands of the
Lord Chamberlain. Early in the summer, as soon as the
royal decision as to the direction and duration of the progress
could be obtained, a document was drawn up, known as the
‘ gestes ’ or ‘ jestes ’, by which must be understood, I think,
not a chronicle of res gestae^ but a table of the ‘ gysts * or
gties appointed for each night’s lodging, which is what in
fact it contained.'* Copies of the * gestes ’ were signed by the
Lord Chamberlain and given with warrants from himself to
Gentlemen Ushers of the Chamber, who took them as instruc-
tions to the mayors of towns, and doubtless also to the lord-
lieutenants of counties, through which the progress would pass.
The Ushers were directed to view and report upon the lodgings

* Hunsdon to Cecil, 31 Aug. 1599 (S. P. D. cclxxii. 94) : ‘ She . . . will
go more privately than is fitting for the time, or beseeming her estate ;
yet she will ride through Kingston in state, proportioning very unsuitably
her lodging at Hampton Court unto it, making the Lady Scudamores
lodging her presence chamber, Mrs, Ratcliff es her privy chamber.' James
said of certain law courts, ' They be hke houses in progress, where I have
not, nor can have, such distinct rooms of state as I have here at Whitehall
or at Hampton Court' (Bacon, Apophthegms, in Works, vii. 166). The
distribution of rooms at Theobalds for a visit of 1572 is given in Hatfield
MSS, xiii. no.

* Dasent, vii. 238 ; viii. 401 ; x. 284, 286, 305.

* The Duchess of Suffolk wrote to Cecil in 1570 {Hatfield MSS, i. 481)
to * speak but one good word for me to the harbingers, in case my man
shall not be able to entreat them to help me to some lodging near the
court The harbingers, as in origin Hall officers, would provide for the
Court generally ; the Gentlemen Ushers of the Chamber for the Queen in
person. A P. C. warrant of 29 June 1575 (Dasent. vhi. 402) is for post-
horses for Simon Boier, Gentleman Usher, * being this progresse tyme
appointed to prepare her Majesties lodginges ' (cf. App. A, Btbl, Note),

^ For references to the ‘ gestes cf. i Ellis, ii. 274 ; Wnght, ii. 16 ;
Kempe, 266 ; Birch, Eliz. i. 87 ; Hunter, Hallamshire, 123. Copies of those
for 1603 and 1605 are at the Heralds' College (Lodge, App. 97, 99, 108,
109). Those for 1605 are printed (from Harl. MS. 7044 ?) by Leland,
Coll. ii. 626, and those for 1614, with the corporation’s endorsement of
receipt, from the Leicester archives by Nichols, James, lii. 10.

PAGEANTRY

109

available.^ The royal Waymaker studied the roads, and the
Guard the security of the neighbourhood.* The local officials
were required to see that a sufficient provision of food, drink,
and fuel was secured, and to furnish that important safe-
guard, a certificate that their districts were free from the
dangerous infection of the plague.* The ‘ gestes ’ were also
published in the household, and individual courtiers hastened
to send them to their friends, and to give advice to those
scheduled as royal hosts about the kind of entertainment
which the sovereign would expect. There is plenty of evidence
in the private correspondence of the period that the honour
of a royal visit was not anticipated without some anxieties.
That of Sir William More at Loseley contains several references
to the subject. There is a letter from Sir Anthony Wingfield,
who tells More that he has reported to the Lord Chamberlain
‘ what fewe smal romes and howe unmete your howes was
for the Queues majesty ’. She had decided to go to a manor-
house of her own, but had again changed her mind. Wingfield
had spoken to Lord Admiral Clinton, * for that ytt shalbe
a grete trouboul and a henderanes to you and advises More
to try his influence with Leicester. This must have been
written before the present fine house at Loseley, built during
1562-8, was sufficiently completed to house the Queen. More,
however, had a visit in 1567, and another in 1576, after
which his neighbour, Henry Goringe of Burton, who expected
one in 1577, wrote to ask him * what order was taken by her
Maiesties offycers at that tyme that her grace was with youe,
and whether your howse were furnyshed with her highnes
stufe, wyne, beer, and other provycion, or that you purveyd
for the same or any parte thereof ’. He had a third in 1583,
of which he was warned by Sir Christopher Hatton in a letter
of 4 August, directing him to see everything well ordered,
and the house ‘ sweete and cleane There had been a ‘ brute *
of infection, but this was now reported as ‘ a misinformation
On 24 August, Hatton wrote again. More should ‘ avoyd *
his family, and make everything ready ‘ as to your owne
discretion shall seeme most needefull for her maiesties good

* A survey of houses for a progress in Herts is in 5 . P. D. cxxv. 46.

2 Hatfield MSS. v. 19, 309 ; vii. 378.

® Kelly, 302, 319, 345, 360 ; Nichols, James, hi. ii ; Wright,

ii. 16 ; Howard, 21 1. A * Remembrance for the R-ogress ' of 1575 (Pefiys
MS. 179) contains elaborate notes for routes (not those ultimately foliowed)
and mileage, for the provision of vehicles, for instructions to sheriffs about
com and hay, and justices about flesh, fish, and fowl, for the carriage of
wine from London, and the brewing of beer locally. If the country ale
doesn't please the Queen, a London supply must be provided, or a brewer
taken down.

no

THE COURT

contentation The sheriff was not to attend her on this
occasion, but More and scyne other gentlemen had better
meet her in Guildford. Finally, he had one in 1591, and one
Mr. Constable came with a letter from Lord Hunsdon, asking
for More’s help in selecting suitable lodgings on the way to
Petworth or Cowdray.^ To these letters can be added others
from various sources. In 1572 Sir Nicholas Bacon wrote to
Burghley from Gorhambury that he understood ‘ by comen
speche * that the Queen was coming, and being uncertain of
the date and desirous to ‘ take that cours that myght best
pleas her maiestie ’, begged for advice ‘ what you thinke to
be the best waye for me to deale in this matter : ffor, in
very deede, no man is more rawe in suche a matter then my
selfe Only a few days later Burghley also had a letter
from the Earl of Bedford, then on his way to Woburn Abbey
to make preparations. He wishes his rooms and lodgings
were better, and says, ‘ I trust your Lordship will have in
remembraunce to provide and hclpe that her Maiesties tarieng
be not above two nights and a daye ; lor, for so long tyme do
I prepare In the following year, 1573, it was the turn of
Archbishop Parker to be both flattered and perturbed by the
intimation of a visit to Canterbury. He can lodge the Queen,
he tells Burghley, and also, at any rate ‘ for a progresse-
tyme ’, the Treasurer himself, the Chamberlain, Leicester, and
Hatton, ‘ thinking that your Lordships will furnisshe the
places with your owne stuffe The house, indeed, was ‘ of
an evill ayer, hanging upon the churche and having no
prospect to loke on the people : but yet, I trust, the con-
venience of the building would serve ’. Possibly the Queen
would prefer ‘ her owne pallace at St. Austens and the lords
could go to the dean and prebendaries, several of whom have
offered to take Burghley. In any case he would wish to dine
the Queen, and the nobles and her train in ‘ my bigger hall
Meanwhile he will write to the Lord Chamberlain on some
things that concern his office.^ In 1577 was the Lord
Chamberlain himself, the Earl of Sussex, who received a
touching appeal from Lord Buckhurst for ‘ some certenty of

‘ Kempe, 265. Wingfield’s letter is only dated 2 Aiig, ; Lord Clinton,
who is named, became Earl of Lincoln in May 1572. More preserved
a letter of 5 Aug. 1567 from William Lord Howard to the Mayor of
Guildford, asking for a close to graze his horses in during the Queen’s
visit to the town. On 24 Aug. 1 576 a Mr. Horsman wrote to More (Nichols,
ii. 7), ‘ ’Tis thought the Queen will not come to your house this summer ’.

* I Ellis, ii. 265.

^ Ibid. 266. In 1570 Bedford had written to urge on Cecil the
unsuitability of Chenies for the Queen (Hatfield MSS. i. 477).

^ I Ellis, ii. 267.

PAGEANTRY

III

the progres, yf it may possibly be Will the Queen come

to Lewes, and if so, for how l^ng ? All the provision in
Kent, Surrey, and Sussex is already taken up by the Earl
of Arundel, Viscount Montagu and others, and he will have
to send over to Flanders, Unless the Queen will ‘ presently
determin *, he does not see how he can perform that ‘ which
is du and convenient And may it please God * that the
hous do not mislike her ; that is my cheif care *, Apparently
Buckhurst, like More a decade earlier, was building, for he
adds, * But yf her Highness had taried but on yere longer,
we had ben to to happy ; but Gods will and hers be doon
Sussex, though called upon to advise others, had his own
subjects for reflection. He had offered the Queen hospitality
at New Hall, apparently at short notice on some change of
programme, and she replied that ‘ it were no good reason and
less good manners * to trouble him. In forwarding her message
Leicester had added, perhaps maliciously, for there was no
love lost between him and Sussex, ‘ Nevertheless, my lord,
for mine own opinion, I believe she wil hunt, and visit your
house, coming so neer. Herein you may use the matter
accordingly, since she would have you not to look for her.’
Attempts were being made to dissuade her from having
a progress at all, ‘ But it much misliketh her not to go some
wher to have change of air and the progress was ‘ most
like to go forward, since she fancieth it so greatly herself
However, there was a good deal of plague about, and in the
end the progress was abandoned, doubtless to the relief of
both Sussex and Buckhurst. Perhaps the most amusing
letter of all, in its delicate attempt to balance deprecation
with loyalty, is one written by Sir William Cornwallis to
Walsingham in 1583, on behalf of the Earl of Northumberland
at Petworth. The earl wished to learn ‘ as much certeinty
as he can ’ of the expected visit, and after mentioning ‘ the
shortness of the tyme ’ for provision and the illness of Lady
Northumberland, Cornwallis continues, ‘ Notwithstanding,
Sir, this is very trew, yet it may not be advertysed, lest it
might be thought to give impediment to her Majesties coming,
wherof I perceyve my lord very glade and desirous ’. Finally
he ventures a discreet hint on his own account, fearing that
‘ her Majestie will never thank him that hath perswaded this
progreyse, nor those lords that shall receive her, how great
entertaynment soever they give her, considering the wayes
by which she must come to them, up the hill and down the
hill, so as she shall not be able to use ether coche or litter

* Ibid. 271,

2 Ibid. 272.

II 2

THE COURT

with ease, and those ways also so full of louse stones, as it
is carefull and painfull ridifig for anybody, nether can ther
be in this cuntrey any wayes devysed to avoyd those ould
wayes. In truth. Sir, thus I find it, and I wyshe some others
knew it, so I wear not the author ; who though I write it
for care of the Queen, yet might it be interpreted other-
wise.’ ^ Northumberland had at this time good reason to be
diplomatic. Probably he was already under Walsingham’s
suspicion, and before the end of the year he was in the Tower,
for his participation in the Throgmorton plot. Against all
this uneasiness may be set the genuine spirit of welcome and
personal affection for the Queen which appears to have pre-
vailed in the much visited household of Lord Norris of Rycote.
Leicester reports to Hatton in 1582 his own ‘ piece of cold
entertainment * at the hands of Lady Norris, because he and
Hatton * were the chief hinderers of her Majesty’s coming
hither, which they took more unkindly than there was cause
indeed ’. Inverting Cornwallis’s plea, he had alleged ‘ the
foul and ragged way ’ as an excuse, and adds as his comment,
‘ A hearty noble couple are they as ever I saw towards her
Highness

Much additional inconvenience was evidently caused to
voluntary and involuntary hosts alike by the characteristic
indecision which led Elizabeth, in small things as well as
great, to be constantly chopping and changing her plans.
The ‘ gestes ’ might be set down, but they were never final,
to the last minute. The good city of Leicester was warned
four times to make preparation, in 1562, 1575, 1576, and
1585, and never had the felicity of beholding its sovereign
at all.® The point comes out clearly enough in the letters
already quoted ; perhaps even more clearly in a final group
written in August 1597 by one of Burghley’s secretaries,
Henry Maynard, from London to another, Michael Hicks,
who was in fluttered anticipation of a visit at Ruckholt in
Essex. Maynard wrote three times in the course of five days.
On the loth he warned Hicks to expect the Queen in the
following week, ‘ if the iestes hold, which after manie altera-
cions is so sett downe this daie ’. He will let him know if

» Sussex Arch. Collections, v. 194.

2 Nicolas, Hatton, 269. Lady Norris, to whom Elizabeth wrote affec-
tionately as her ‘ crow was the daughter of Lord Williams of Thame,
who had befriended her as a prisoner at Woodstock ; on the Rycote
entertainment of 1592, cf. p. 125.

3 Kelly, Progresses, 2g6. On'6 July 1576 Gilbert Talbot wrote to Lord
Shrewsbury (Lodge, ii. 75) : ‘ There hath been sundry determinations of
her Majesty's progress this summer. . . . These two or three days it hath
changed every five hours.*

PAGEANTRY 113

there is any further change, ‘ for wee are greatlie aferd of
Theobalds On the 12th there ^ad been no change as yet
and Hicks had better come to court for advice. There was
still danger of Theobalds, ‘ but as yett it is not sett downe
With a sigh, Maynard adds, ‘ This progresse much trowbleth
mee, for that we knowe not what corse the Queen will take
On the 15th he can at last announce that no change was now
expected. He had told the Lord Chamberlain that Hicks
was troubled at the insufficient accommodation he could
provide for the royal train. ‘ His awnsweare was that you
weare unwise to be at anie such charge : but onclie to leave
the howse to the Quene : and wished that theare might be
presented to hir Majestic from your wief sum fine wastcoate,
or fine ruffe, or like thinge, which he said would be acceptablie
taken as if it weare of greate price.* Maynard was still
anticipating a descent on Theobalds, although nothing had
been said about it.^ As a matter of fact, his anticipation
was justified, and Theobalds was visited in the course of
September. In 1599 there was a scare lest the short progress
planned should be extended, * by reason of an intercepted
letter, wherein the giving over of long voyages was noted
to be sign of age *.*

Contact with the great is not ordinarily, for the plain man,
a bed of roses ; and there is no reason to suppose that it was
otherwise in the spacious times of Elizabeth. You probably
got knighted, if you were not a knight already, which cost
you some fees, and you received some sugared royal compli-
ments on the excellence of your entertainment and the appro-
priateness of your ‘ devices But you had wrestled for
a month with poulterers and with poets. You had * avoided *
your house, and made yourself uncomfortable in a neigh-
bouring lodge. You had seen your trim gardens and terraces
encamped upon by a locust-swarm of all the tag-rag and
bobtail that follows a court. And with your knowledge of
that queer streak in the Tudor blood, you had been on
tenterhooks all the time lest at some real or fancied dislike
the royal countenance might become clouded, and the com-
pliments give way to a bitter jest or to open railing. ‘ I have
had hitherto a troublesome progress,* writes Cecil to Parker
in 1561, ‘ to stay the Queen’s majesty from daily offence
conceived against the clergy, by reason of the undiscreet
behaviour of the readers and ministers in these countries of

‘ I EUis, ii. 274.

* Sir Charles Danvers to the Earl of Southampton (Hatfield MSS.
ix. 246). For other letters of courtly deprecation, which I have no room
to quote, cf. Hatton, 223 ; Hatfield MSS. v. 19, 299. 309.

2229*1 1

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114

Suffolk and Essex.* ^ Parker himself was something of a
favourite with Elizabeth, ^et John Harington can record an
incredible insult to his wife on the doorstep of Lambeth.*
And Richard Topcliffe, hunter of recusants, describes with
indecent glee how the hospitality of Edward Rookwood in
1578 was rewarded with a committal to prison and a public
obloquy on his religion.* The arrogance of the royal train
had always to be reckoned with. As far back as 1526
Henry VIII had issued a formal household order against the
spoliation of houses in progress.^ In 1574 Leicester instigated

* Parker Correspondence, 148.

* Harington, ii. i6. * She gave him very speciall thanks, with gratious
and honorable tearms, and then looking on his wife ; “ and you (saith
she) Madam I may not call you, and Mistris I am ashamed to call you,
so I know not what to call you, but yet I do thanke you

® Lodge, ii. 119 : * This Rookwood is a Papist of kind newly crept out
of his late wardship. Her majesty, by some means I know not, was
lodged at his house, Ewston, far unmeet for her Highness, but fitter for
the blackguard ; nevertheless (the gentleman brought into her Majesty’s
presence by like device) her excellent Majesty gave to Rookwood ordinary
thanks for his bad house, and her fair hand to kiss ; after which it was
braved at. But my Lord Chamberlain, nobly and gravely understanding
that Rookwood was excommunicated for Papistry, called him before him ;
demanded of him how he durst presume to attempt her real presence,
he, unfit to accompany any Christian person ; forthwith said he was
fitter for a pair of stocks ; commanded him out of the Court, and yet
to attend her Council’s pleasure ; and at Norwich he was committed.
And, to decipher the gentleman to the full ; a piece of plate being missed
in the Court, and searched for in his hay house, in the hay rick such an
image of our Lady was there found, as for greatness, for gayness, and
workmanship, I did never see such a match ; and, after a sort of country
dances ended, in her Majesty’s sight the idol was set behind the people,
who avoided. She rather seemed a beast raised up on a sudden from hell
by conjuring, than the picture for whom it had been so often and long
abused. Her Majesty commanded it to the fire, which in her sight by
the country folks was quickly done, to her content, and unspeakable joy
of every one but some one or two who had sucked of the idol’s poisoned
milk.’ Rookwood ’s committal and release are recorded in the P, C. Acts
(Dasent, x. 310, 312, 342). He suffered at a later date as a recusant and
died in gaol. His cousin, Ambrose Rookwood of Stanningfield, was a Guy
Fawkes conspirator {D.N.B,; Dasent, xxv. 118, 203, 252, 371, 419
Copinger, Manors of Suffolk, i. 292).

^ H. O. 145 : * It is often and in manner dayly seene, that as well in
the kings owne houses, as in the places of other noblemen and gentlemen,
where the kings Grace doth fortune to lye or come unto, not onely lockes
of doores, tables, formes, cupboards, tressells, and other ymplements of
household, be carryed, purloyned, and taken away, by such servants and
others as be lodged in the same houses and places ; but also such pleasures
and commodities as they have about their houses, that is to say, deer,
fish, orchards, hay, come, grasse, pasture, and other store belonging to
the same noblemen and gentlemen, or to others dwelling neere abouts,
is by ravine taken, dispoiled, wasted and spent, without lycence or consent
of the owner, or any money paid for the same, to the kings great dis-

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115

a surprise visit to Berkeley Castle, which was not in the
‘ gestes and so ruined the head of deer by killing twenty-
seven in one day that Lord Berkeley in a passion disparked
the estate. This appears to have been a deliberate scheme
by Leicester to bring Berkeley into disfavour and secure the
castle himself.^ The Stuart households were probably just
as bad. After Anne’s visit in 1603, the Leicester corporation
had to pursue the court * aboute lynnyns and pewter that
was myssinge

It is not quite clear how far these annoyances were aggra-
vated by the financial burden of the royal entertainment.
There is some evidence that, so far as the essentials of food
and drink and fuel were concerned, the household was pre-
pared to pay its way, and that, although the hosts had to
make provision of these necessaries, they were entitled to
recoupment for the cost by the Cofferer.^ Certainly the
progress, once an economy for the Crown, had become an
expense.^ Burghley’s papers contain an estimate, based on
the accounts of 1573, showing an ‘ increase of chardgies in
the time of progresse * to the extent of £1,034, ‘ which should
not be if her Majestic remeynid at her Standing Howses
within XX myles of London This is not wholly conclusive,
because in any case part of the time was usually spent, not
in private houses, but at royal manors or even in inns.® But

honour, and the no little damage and displeasure of those to whose houses
the Kings Highne<ise doth fortune to repaire . .

^ I Ellis, ii. 277, evidently misdated ‘ ann. 15 ' for ‘ ann. 16

2 Kelly, Progresses, 325.

® The Cofferer's Account for the progress of 1561, printed in Nichols,
Eliz. i. 92, from CoU. Vesp. C. xiv, shows expenditure while the court
lay or dined at several private houses. On 24 July 1560 Sir N. Bacon
wrote to Parker, * The Queen^s majesty meaneth on Monday next to dine
at Lambeth ; and although it shall be altogether of her provision, yet
I thought it meet to make you privy thereto, lest, other men forgetting
it, the thing should be too sudden ' (Parker, 120). This was a dinner on
a remove from Greenwich to Richmond, not during a progress ; but the
principle was probably the same. The older practice was certainly for
the crown to pay, Puttenham, iii. 24 (ed. Arber, 301), records that
Henry VII, * if his chaunce had bene to lye at any of his subiects houses,
or to passe moe meales then one, he that would take vpon him to defray
the charge of his dyet, or of his officers and houshold, he would be
maruelously offended with it, saying what priuate subiect dare vndertake
a Princes charge, or looke into the secret of his expence ? ' And the
discreet courtier adds, ' Her Maiestie hath bene knowne oftentimes to
mislike the superfluous expence of her subiects bestowed vpon her in
times of her progresses '.

* Cf. p. 17. * I Ellis, ii. 265, from Lansd. MS. 16, f. 107.

• In 1576 the Board of Green Cloth paid 6s. Sd. by way of ' rewards
given to inns in progress time where her majesty hath been ' (Nichols,
Eliz. ii. 48).

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ii6

its indication is confirmed, so far as civic visits are concerned|
by entries in corporation acCounts, which appear to be limited
to expenditure upon the hire or purchase of plenishing, the
repair of streets and pavements and painting of gates and
public buildings, the provision of a fairly costly gift in the
form of a gold cup with money in it, and the payment of
fees to the queen’s waymaker for inspecting the roads, and
to various officers of the chamber, hall, and stable. The visit
of 1575 cost the city of Worcester £173^ raised partly out of
corporation funds, partly by a special levy. The city of
Leicester met that of 1612 with a levy of £74 is, gi., while
that of 1614 cost them £102 12^. Anything in the way

of a mimetic entertainment would probably fall by civic
custom on the guilds,^ And the establishment of the Revels,
which followed the progress, was ready to help at need, with
a mask or banqueting house.® There are definite statements
as to the recoupment of the cost of light, rushes, and fuel
at Oxford in 1566, and of beer when Prince Charles passed
through Leicester in 1604.'* Of course, the Crown used its
feudal right of purveyance ; that is to say, of purchase within
the verge at rates fixed by itself ; and for this purchase
a local jui^ was empanelled to assist the Clerk of the Market
in drawing up a tariff and supervising weights and measures.®

• Kelly, Progresses, 298, 320, 345, 359 ; Nichols, EHz. i. 551.

• At Coventry in 1566 * The tanners pageant stood at St. Johns Church,
the drapers pageant at the Cross, the smiths pageant at Little Park Street
End, and the weavers pageant at Much Park Street ’ (H. Craig, Coventry
Corpus Christi Plays, xxi, misdated 1567 ; cf. ibid. 106).

3 Feuillerat, Eliz. 105, 109, 118, 130, 182, 225, shows that the Revels
followed the progresses of 1559, when they furnished a banqueting house
and mask at Horsley ; of 1 566, when their expenses came to 187 8s. ii\d. ;
of 1571* when the Master took nine men, three horses and a wagon ; of
1573, when they spent £21 los. 8<f. on carriage and apparently the mask
at Canterbury ; and of 1 574, when they furnished the Italian players at
Windsor and Reading. A Green Cloth document of 1576 (Nichols, Eliz.
ii. 50) also records the expenditure of {,iog is. iid. by the Woodyard on
* necessaries, as plancks, ^ards, quarters, tressets, forms, and carpenters,
hired in time of progresses *. Another of 1604 (Nichols, James, i. xi) is
a record of wood felled to furnish the king's house with fuel during the
recent progress.

^ Ch. Ch. A acts. 1566 (Boas, 107), * to the clerkes of the greene clothe
foi unburdeninge at our requeste the universitie & us of the lightes &
rushes iij payre of gloves . . . xviijs ... to the yeoman of the woodyarde
for helpinge us to a recompence of our woode & cole spent . . . x® *.
Kelly, Progresses, 328, * for the which you shall have satisfaction '.

• Kelly, Progresses, 361, prints the precept for the jury at Leicester
in 1614. Jacobean proclamations (Prod. 950, 994, 1096, 1098, 1135).
regulating the functions of the Clerk of the Market, claim that local prices,
especially on progress, are often extortionate. Nichols, Eliz, iii. 252,
prints a memorandum of Puckering's for Elizabeth’s intended visit in
1 594, which contemplates * purveyed diet

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117

But the abuses of purveyance, which included the impress*
ment of vehicles by the royal cajjt-takers, cannot have borne
very heavily upon districts rarely visited, although the home
counties, which were more often traversed and contained
standing houses, had no doubt their grievances.^

The Hicks correspondence suggests that, even in 1597, the
household was still prepared to provision itself, at any rate
in the smaller private houses. But there is a good deal of
evidence to show that, where persons of wealth were con-
cerned, a different practice grew up. A visit to Gorhambury
in 1577 cost Sir Nicolas Bacon £577.^ Parker’s son recorded
that his father’s entertainment of the Queen at Canterbury
and other houses, with his gifts to her and the lords and
ladies, cost him above £2,000, and that in addition he spent
£170 at Canterbury in rewards to the officers of the house-
hold.^ Burghley’s domestic biographer tells us that the twelve
visits to Theobalds cost him ‘ two or three thousand pounds
every tyme’, which sufficiently explains why his adherents
were not particularly anxious for a visit in 1597.^ Parker
had to find many nights’ lodging, as the Queen passed up
and down stream, and at Canterbury Elizabeth is known to
have occupied a house of her own. But Burghley’s heavy
expenditure must surely have covered more than the mere
gifts and the spectacular side of his entertainments. A visit
to the Marquis of Winchester in 1601 was ‘ with more charge
than the constitution of Basing may well bear For that
to Harefield in 1602 the bills are preserved, and amount to
£2,013 4^-1 of which £1,255 125 . od, was apparently for

‘ On the history of purveyance in general, the protests of Jacobean
parUaments, and the attempts to persuade the shires to accept * com-
positions cf. Gardiner, i. 170, 299; ii. 113; Cheyney, 1. 29; Bray m
Archcteologia, viii. 329; Nichols, James, i. x; Kempe, 272 ; ProcL 1033.
Nichols prints a table of c, 1604 showing the proportion of carts, 220 in
all, charged on each of eight counties at removes from Richmond, Windsor,
Hampton Court, Nonsuch, or Oatlands. The king paid 2d. a mile and
required not more than twelve miles a day. A Green Cloth order of 1609
limits the charge on the baiUwick of Surrey (in Windsor Forest) to eight
carts on a remove from Windsor or other houses in the bailiwick, or from
Easthampstead, to Hampton Court, Oatlands, Richmond, or Farnham.
The household officers were accused of blackmailing owners of carts to
avoid impressment, and of requisitioning superfluous provisions and
reselling them at a profit. In 1605 Venetian ambassador reported
(V. P, X. 267, 285) that James's servants were under less good control
than Elizabeth's, and that the longer time now spent in the country and
more frequent removes aggravated the burden of purveyance. The carts
were wanted for harvest. Moreover, hunting destroyed the crops.

* Birch. Eliz. i. 12. ® Parker, xii.

* Peck, Desiderata Curiosa, 25.

* Thomas Tooke to John Hubbard (Goodman, ii. 20).

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ii8

provisions, ;^199 gs. iid. for temporary buildings, and the
balance presumably for gifts^ spectacles, and the like. There
is no indication of any repayments by the royal Cofferer,
although Sir Thomas Egerton’s friends came nobly to his
assistance, and sent in innumerable presents, including no
less than eighty-six stags and bucks, eleven oxen, sixty-five
sheep, and forty-one sugar-loaves, as well as birds, fish,
oysters, Selsea cockles, cheese-cakes, sweetmeats, wine, wheat,
and salt*^ Finally we have the definite statement of the
French ambassador La Mothe F6nelon in 1575, that at Kenil-
worth Leicester ‘ a deffray^ toute la court a cent soixante
platz d’assiette, Tespace de douze jours And we have that
of the Venetian ambassador Foscarini in 1612, that ‘ his
Majesty’s charges are borne by the owners of the houses
where he lodges Foscarini had accompanied the progress
to Belvoir, and was much struck with the large numbers,
more than a thousand, who were housed there, and with the
costly style in which things were done, * far exceeding that
of the court when in London or a neighbouring palace He
found personally, as others have found since his day, that
visiting was much more expensive than staying at home, on
account of the largesse expected.^ I am inclined to think
that we have come here upon a point of honour, and that,
while it was not in theory incumbent upon a poor man to
feed as well as lodge his mistress, it gradually became cus-
tomary for rich men to give a special proof of their devotion
by omitting to claim the recoupment to which they were
strictly entitled. And if this was so, of course in the long
run the poor men had to follow suit. Sir William Clarke in
1602 was counted a churl, for he ‘ neither gives meat nor
money to any of the progressors. The house Her Majesty
has at commandment, and his grass the guard’s horses eat,
and this is all.’ ^ The right to occupy the house of a subject
was indeed a matter of feudal tradition. All manors were
ultimately held of the Crown. We find Elizabeth dating from
‘ our manor of Cheneys ’ in 1570, although Chenies had long
been in the hands of the Russells ; and it was an obiter dictum

‘ Egerton Papers, 340. The second of the documents chere printed is
one of <^ollier’s forgeries. On 27 April 1603 Sir Robert Cecil wrote to
Egerton (Egerton Papers, 369) to borrow some plate, ‘ because of my self
I am not able to furnish my house at Theobalds of all such necessarys
as are convenient for his Maiestys reception without the helpe of my
trends '.

La Mothe, vi. 478. Gossip said that Leicester's magnificence was in
return for an ‘ octroy de quelques vaquanz ' worth 200,000 crowns.

3 K. P. xii. 409,

* Northumberland to Cobham (S. P, D. cclxxxiv. 97).

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119

of Lord Northampton in a Star Chamber case of 1606 that
‘ the kinge by his prerogative m^y take vp any howse in his
progres

Those who accompanied the progress had their own woes
to bear. There was a good deal of ‘ roughing it The rate
of advance, at ten or twelve miles a day, broken by a dinner
at some wayside mansion or in a temporarily constructed
‘ dining house was inevitably slow. The weather and the
roads were often unkind ; nor was the advance guard of two
hundred and twenty carts carrying baggage likely to have
mended the condition of the latter.^ The numbers were great,
and if accommodation was scant, some had to make shift with
tents and booths. The commissariat was not always perfect.
Even the Queen might come off badly. On one occasion
Leicester reported to Burghley that the beer had been unsatis-
factory. ‘ Hit did put her very farr out of temper, and
almost all the company beside.* Happily, a better brew had
been discovered. ‘ God be thanked she is now perfectly well
and merry.’ * Burghley himself was apparently timed to join
the progress at Dudley, and he received a discreet hint from
Walsingham that a change of programme would bring the
Queen there earlier than had been expected, * whereuppon
your Lordship may take some just cause to excuse you not
coming thither *.^ No doubt Burghley’s duties as Lord
Treasurer often kept him at Westminster. But the fact is
that the sixteenth-century growth of luxury was making
a migratory court something of an anachronism.^ The pro-
gress was by no means always on the same scale of elabora-
tion. In some years it was limited to a month or so in the
counties nearest to London ; in others it extended over three
or four months, and the Queen went fairly far afield. During
the earlier years the most important progresses were those
of 1564 and 1566, which included visits to Cambridge and to
Oxford respectively. In 1562, 1563, and 1565 there were no
progresses at all, owing to plague or other reasons. The
period of the great progresses was the second decade of the

* Wright, i. 370; Hawarde, 31 1.

® Nichols, i. 601, prints from Lansd. MS. i6, 'The Q. Prayer after
a Progress, Aug. 15 [1574] being then at Bristow It contains a thanks-
giving for ' preseruinge me in this longe and dangerus jorneye

^ Kelly, Progresses t 301, from Harl. MS. 6996. The letter is undated,
but as the court was going to Kemlworth, it may belong to 1575 -

* Wright, ii. 16.

* ' 1 am old, and come now evil away with the inconveniences of pro-
gress. I followed her Majesty until my man returned and told me he
could get neither fit lodging for me nor room for my horse,' writes Sir
Henry Lee in 1591 (Hatfield MSS. iv. 136).

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reign ; and it culminated in the ‘ Princely Pleasures ’ of
Kenilworth of 1575. Durin§^ 1572, 1574, and 1575 Elizabeth
covered a large part of the Midlands ; during 1573 Kent and
Sussex ; during 1578 East Anglia. She reached Southampton
in 1560 and 1569, Dover in 1573, Bristol in 1574, Stafford
and Chartley in 1575. Farther north or west I do not find
her ; visits were planned to the chief towns of the Presidencies
of Wales and of the North, to Shrewsbury in 1575 and to
York in 1584, but these never came off. Progresses were
practically suspended during the troublous decade before the
Armada, when the Queen’s life was hardly ever safe from
plots, and she generally spent the autumn quietly at Oatlands
or Nonsuch. In 1591 and 1592 the old custom was revived ;
Southampton was revisited in the former year, Oxford and
the Cotswolds in the latter. There was another revival
towards the end of the reign, and there were short progresses
in 1597, 1600, 1601, and 1602. Two unsuccessful plans were
made to get as far as Wiltshire. Elizabeth’s strength was
failing, but the restlessness of her latter years was upon her,
and she would not have it said that she was too old to travel.
She had to reckon, however, with courtiers who had learnt
to love their ease. ‘ The Lords are sorry for it,’ wrote Rowland
White to Sir Robert Sidney, when she determined to set out
from Nonsuch in 1600, ‘ butt her majestic bids the old stay
behind, and the young and able to goe with her. She had
just cause to be offended, that at her remove to this place
she was soe poorely attended; for I never saw so small
a train.’ ^ At all times, and particularly during the later
years, the formal progresses were supplemented by short
visits of a few days, or even a few hours, to favoured courtiers,
sometimes by way of a ‘ by-progress * in spring or autumn,
sometimes in the course of a remove from one standing house
to another, sometimes merely to relieve a continuous residence
at the same palace.^ Several of the twelve visits to Theo-
balds, for which Elizabeth had evidently a liking, and which
had been rebuilt to accommodate her, were by progresses.
The household did not always accompany her on these occa-
sions. Within London itself, she also occasionally paid a visit.
In the last winter of her life, several entertainments were
carefully arranged for her, in the hope of keeping her at
Whitehall.® In 1601 and 1602 she went a-Maying at Highgate

» Sydney Papers, ii. 210.

* Walsingham wrote to Shrewsbury from Oatlands on 2 Sept. 1584
(Lodge, ii. 245), that the Privy ODuncil was divided * by reason of a little
by progress her Majesty hath made for her recreation

* Chamberlain. 166, 169, * All is to entertain the time, and win her to

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121

and Lewisham. Another day’s visit, probably of 1600, is
elaborately described by Sir Robert Sidney to Sir John
Harington.^

With the arrival of James and his horde of hungry Scots,
and the setting-up of supernumerary establishments for Anne
and the royal children, the progress became a more unwieldy
institution than ever. During the greater part of 1603 the
court was abroad. The triumphal descent of the King in
April and May was practically a progress. So was that of
Anne in June. There was a regular progress in August and
September, and the prevalence of plague compelled the pro-
longation of this throughout the autumn, until the weary
court sank into its winter quarters at Christmas. A groan
went up to Lord Shrewsbury from Robert Lord Cecil at Wood-
stock, which he found an * unwholesome * and ‘ uneaseful *
house, not able to lodge more than the King and Queen, the
privy chamber ladies, and some three or four of the Scottish
Council, ‘ Neither Chamberlain, nor one English counsellor
have a room, which will be a sour sauce to some of your old
friends that have been merry with you in a winter’s night,
from whence they have not removed to their bed in a snowy
storm.’ The plague was driving the court up and down.

* God bless the king, for once a week one or other dies in our

stay here if may be’. ‘ These feastings have had their effect to stay
the Court here this Christmas, though most of the cariages were well
onward on theire waye to Richmond.’

* Harington, i. 314: ‘ Her Highness hath done honour to my poor
house by visiting me, and seemed much pleased at what we did to please
her. My son made her a fair speech, to which she did give most gracious
reply. The women did dance before her, whilst the cornets did salute
from the gallery ; and she did vouchsafe to eat two morsels of rich comfit
cake, and drank a small cordial from a gold cup. She had a marvelous
suit of velvet borne by four of her first women attendants in nch apparel ;
two ushers did go before, and at going up stairs she called for a staff,
and was much wearied in walking about the house, and said she wished
to come another day. Six drums and six trumpets waited in the court,
and sounded at her approach and departure. My wife did bear herself
in wondrous good liking, and was attired in a purple kyrtle, fringed with
gold ; and my self, in a rich band and collar of needle- work, and did
wear a goodly stuff of the bravest cut and fashion, with an under body
of silver and loops. The Queen was much in commendation of our
appearances, and smiled at the ladies, who in their dances often came up
to the Stepp on which the seat was fixed to make their obeysance, and
so fell back into their order again. The younger Markham did several
gallant feats on a horse before the gate, leaping down and kissing his
sword, then mounting swiftly on the saddle, and passed a lance with
much skill. The day well nigh spent, the Queen went and tasted a small
beverage that was set out in divers rooms where she might pass ; and
then in much order was attended to her palace, the comets and trumpets
sounding through the streets.'

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tents.’ ^ In the same strain wrote Levinus Muncke a little
later to Winwood from Wilton of ‘ these arrant removes *, in
which ‘ we endure misserie apace and want of all things,
which I never thought the country so unable to supply us
Nevertheless, James maintained the tradition, and devoted
a month or two in each year to a progress, which, but for
the occasional presence of the queen or prince, and the
attendance, not quite invariable, of the council and house-
hold, did not differ much in character from his far more
frequent hunting journeys. His direction was generally deter-
mined by the existence of hunting facilities, and such districts
as the New Forest, Wychwood and Sherwood Forests, and
Salisbury Plain figure again and again in the ‘ gestes ’. He
had reached Southampton and even the Isle of Wight in
1603, and probably repeated his visit in 1607 and 1611. He
also touched the sea at Lulworth in 1615. He visited Oxford
from Woodstock in 1605 and Cambridge twice during hunting
journeys in 1615. Anne made an independent progress to the
west, for the sake of the Bath waters, in 1613, and got as far
as Bristol.

We have had sufficient peeps behind the court arras to
give a pleasantly sub-acid flavour of irony to the effusive
accounts of royal receptions contained in official chronicles,
or in the semi-official narratives of poets who were anxious
to preserve the memory of the verses and devices contributed
by themselves.^ These in their turn enable us to recapture
something of whatever rapture the rather artless forms of
mimesis employed may have awakened in Renaissance
breasts ; although of course the few devices of which details
have reached us are but a tithe of those on whose fantasy
and grace the dust of oblivion has for centuries lain thick.
It was naturally at* the visits to private houses that the spirit
of sheer entertainment had fullest scope, and a glance at the
diaries for Kenilworth in 1575 or for Elvetham in 1591 will
show the variety of pastime which ministered spectacle to
the eyes and flattery to the self-esteem of Oriana on her
holidays. The visit to Kenilworth extended over three weeks.
The Queen arrived on 9 July and was greeted with .speeches
by Sibylla, by a porter as Hercules, and by the Lady of the
Lake, and that she might not forget that she was a scholar,
with a Latin speech by a Poet. July 10 was a Sunday, and

^ Lodge, iii. 38. 2 Winwood, ii. 155.

3 Many of the numbers in the song-books of the madiigalists and
lutenists probably had their origin in entertainments. The Triumphs of
Oriana (1601), for example, may have been written as a whole for a royal
birthday or maying ; cf. also examples in Fellowes, 121, 328, 434, 464, 485.

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123

after divine service there was a display of fireworks. On
II July the Queen hunted, and ipn her return listened to an
out-of-door dialogue between a Savage Man — the mediaeval
folk-personage known as the ‘ wodwose ' — and the classical
Echo. July 12 was a day of rest, and 13 July was again
devoted to hunting. On 14 July came a bear-baiting, another
display of fireworks, and acrobatic feats by an Italian. After
two days* interval, the sports began again on 17 July, with
country shows of a bride-ale, a quintain, and the Coventry
Hock-Tuesday play.^ This was followed in the evening by
a play and banquet. A mask was held in readiness, but not
used. On 18 July, after a hunt, came the principal show,
an aquatic one of the Delivery of the Lady of the Lake, with
the classical Arion riding on a dolphin ; and the Queen held
an investiture, and ‘ touched * poor folk for the ‘ evil *. On
19 July the Coventry show was repeated, and by this time
the weather had broken up, and the royal zest for spectacles
was perhaps exhausted. A projected show of Zabeta and
a device of an ancient minstrel were laid aside, and the final
week was uneventful, until the departure on 27 July after
a show in farewell by Silvanus. All this was described, for
the benefit of such of the Queen’s lieges as had not the fortune
to be present, in a printed narrative by George Gascoigne,
who shared with William Hunnis of the Chapel Royal the
main responsibility for the mimetic devices, and in another,
racy and full of vivid detail, by one Robert Laneham, keeper
of the council chamber door, who was in attendance as an
officer of the household.^ The entertainment at the much
shorter visit to the Earl of Hertford at Elvetham in Hamp-
shire, sixteen years later, was on very similar lines. The
house was small, and a temporary ‘ room of estate ’ and other
buildings had been constructed in the park, near an artificial
pond, containing a Ship Isle, a Fort, and a Snail Mount.
The Queen was greeted on arrival with a Latin speech by
a Poet, and a ditty by the Graces and the Hours. A salute
was fired from the pond. After supper there was a concert
with a pavane by Thomas Morley. On the second day, after
the Countess had made her offering in the morning, there
was a great water-show on the pond, with Silvanus and the
sea-gods Neptune, Oceanus, Nereus, and Neaera, which served
to introduce further gifts. On the third day Elizabeth was
awakened with a pastoral song of Phyllida and Corydon.
After dinner there was an exhibition game of * board and
cord *, which must have been a very close anticipation of

* Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 1 54.

* Cf. ch. xxiv.

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lawn-tennis, and in the evening a banquet in the garden and
a display of fireworks. On the fourth morning came Aureola,
the fairy queen, with a round of dancing fairies, and as the
Queen departed there were Nereus and Sylvanus and their
companies at the pond, the Hours and Graces weeping,
a speech from the Poet dressed in black, and a farewell ditty
at the park gate.^ I have set the Kenilworth and Elvetham
entertainments side by side, partly to illustrate the per-
manence of type, and partly because, if any actual sea-maid
and fireworks gave Shakespeare a hint for Oberon’s famous
speech in A Midsummer- Night's Dream^ it must surely have
been those which were comparatively fresh in the memories
of his hearers.^

The medley of Kenilworth and Elvetham repeats itself
elsewhere ; nor is the imaginative range a very wide one.
Classical, romantic, pastoral, and folk-lore elements blend in
quite sufficient congruity. The pagan divinities called upon
are the out-of-door ones. Pan and Ceres at Bisham, Apollo
and Daphne at Sudeley ; and these, with the Nymphs
(Orpington, Cowdray, Harefield) and Satyrs (Harefield, Al-
thorp), may make easy acknowledgement of fundamental
kinship with Aureola or Queen Mab and the native fairies
(Woodstock, Norwich, Hengrave, Althorp) and woodwoses
(Cowdray, Bisham). So, too, the rustic revelry of morris or
country dance (Warwick, Cowdray, Althorp, Wells) or the
choosing of the Cotswold Queen (Sudeley) passes readily
enough into the manner of the formal pastoral, as we find
it in Sidney’s Lady of the May (Wanstead) or his sister’s later
dialogue of Thenot and Piers ; which in turn have their
affinities to the mediaeval d^bat^ surviving in the dialogue of
Constancy and Inconstancy (Woodstock), and in the ‘ con-
tentions ’ of Sir John Davies between a Gentleman Usher
and a Poet, and a Maid, a Wife, and a Widow.^ To a modern
taste, perhaps the most attractive entertainments are the
simple ones in which the Gardener and the Mole-catcher or
the Bailiff and the Dairymaid offer the naive welcome of the

» Cf. ch. xxiv.

2 M. N. D. II. i. 148 :

‘ Thou remembVest
Since once I sat upon a promontory.

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath.

That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres.

To hear the sea-maid's music.*

On the chronology, cf. Sh. Homage, 1 54.

2 On the dibat, cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 79, 187 ; ii. 153, 201.

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125

rustic folk, or those to which the circumstances of place and
time give something of a persG)iaI touch ; as at Theobalds,
where the hermit’s cell typifies the temporary retirement of
Burghley from public life, or at Rycote, where messengers
bring in letters and jewels from sons and daughters of the
house in Ireland, Flanders, France, and Jersey. Only frag-
ments are preserved of the Harefield entertainment in 1602,
but here a delicate fancy must have governed the devices,
suggesting, for example, the presentation of a robe of rain-
bows on behalf of St. Swithin, and the personification of
Harefield itself as Place ‘ in a partie-colored robe, like the
brick house *, accompanied by Time ‘ with yeollow haire, and
in a green roabe, with an hower glasse, stopped, not runninge *.
Here, too, was repeated the pretty notion of Elvetham, and
at the royal departure there was Place again ‘ attyred in
black mourning aparell ’, to bid farewell. In many instances
the mimesis is so contrived as to lead to the introduction of
the gift, which we may gather from the Hicks correspondence
to have been looked upon as an obligatory rite of hospitality.
The frugal and ostentatious soul of Elizabeth loved gifts ;
but James is said, at any rate on his first coming, to have
thought it the more kingly part to decline them.^ The
mimetic entertainment itself, indeed, seems to have lost some-
thing of its vogue with the change of reign ; possibly the
King was less tolerant than his predecessor of pedantries other

‘ V. P. X. 25. Leicester left the Queen by will in 1588 (Sydney Papers,
i. 71) a ‘ Jewel with three great Emrodes with a fair large Table Diamond
in the middest, without a foyle, and set about with many Diamonds
without foyle, and a Roape of fa5n:e white Pearl, to the number six
Hundred, to hang the said Jewel at ; which Pearl and Jewel was once
purposed for her Majesty, against a Coming to Wansted Rowland
Whyte says of the visit to Lord Keeper Puckering at Kew in 1595 (Sydney
Papers, i. 376), ' Her Intertainment for that Meale was great and exceeding
costly. At her first Lighting, she had a fine Fanne, with a Handle garnisht
with Diamonds. When she was in the Midle Way, between the Garden
Gate and the Howse, there came Running towards her, one with a Nosegay
in his Hand, deliuered yt vnto her, with a short well pened speach ; it
had in yt a very rich lewcll, with many Pendants of vnfirld Diamonds,
valewed at 400^ at least. After Dinner, in her Privy Chamber, he gaue
her a faire Paire of Virginals. In her Bed Chamber, presented her with
a fine Gown and a Juppin, which Things were pleasing to her Highnes ;
and, to grace his Lordship the more, she, of her self, tooke from him
a Salt, a Spoone, and a Forcke, of faire Agate '. Of the visit to the Earl
of Nottingham in 1602, Chamberlain, 169, writes, * The Lord Admiralls
feasting the Quene had nothing extraordinarie, neither were his presents
so precious as was expected ; being only a whole suit of apparell, whereas
it was thought he wold have bestowed his rich hangings of all the fights
with the Spanish Armada in eightie-eight *. These hangings were bought
by James at the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding in 1613 (Abstract, 15 ;
V, P, xii. 499) for /i, 628, and were long preserved in the House of Lords.

126

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than his own. There are, of course, the three Sibyls at Oxford
in 1605, which are said to ttave given a hint for Macbeth^
and the amazing Queen of Sheba show in 1606, which has
been preserved for us by the wicked wit of Sir John Haring-
ton.^ And there are three examples from the pen of Ben
Jonson, to whose ingenuity and learning the genre made
a natural appeal, and who had the art to give dramatic life
and point even to such trifles. These are the Satyr, with
which Lord Spencer welcomed Anne and Henry at Althorp
in 1603, the Penates, written when James, like Elizabeth
before him, went a-Maying with Sir William Cornwallis at
Highgate in 1604, and the graceful Theobalds entertainment,
in which the Genius of the house, first weeping for the loss
of his master, and then consoled by Mercury, Good Event,
and the Parcae, made symbolical delivery of it to the Queen
on its exchange by Lord Salisbury with James for Hatfield
in 1607.

The civic entertainments naturally followed more formal
lines than those in private houses. The citizens rode in their
official gowns of black or scarlet. There was a learned oration
by the recorder, and very likely also by the schoolmaster or
a promising scholar of the grammar school. In a cathedral
town there was divine service to be attended in state. The
gift was no fantastic trifle, but a solid cup with angels in it.
The mimesis, too, was of a more old-fashioned type. Mercury
or a nymph might be there, but there were also the tradi-
tional pageants of the guilds, bearing their scenes from the
miracle plays, or more modern allegories, or representations
of local history and industry. At Coventry, in 1566, stood
the Corpus Christi cars of the Tanners, Drapers, Smiths, and
Weavers.^ The variegated Norwich entertainment of 1578
included a speech by King Gurgunt, a pageant of the Common-
wealth, with local craftsmen working at their looms, and
a pageant of the City of Norwich, with Deborah, Esther,
Judith, and Queen Martia.® Even as late as 1613, it was
with scriptural pageants, curiously contaminated with intru-
sive classical themes, that the citizens of Wells greeted Queen
Anne when she visited them from the Bath. The Hammer-
men furnished the Building of the Ark, Vulcan, Venus, and
Cupid, and part of St. George ; the Tanners, Chandlers, and
Bakers, St. Clement and his Friar, part of Actaeon and Diana,
and ‘ a carte of old virgines ’ in hides ; the Cordwainers
Saints Crispin and Crispinian ; the Tailors Herodias and John
Baptist ; and the Mercers the remaining parts of St. George
and of Actaeon and Diana. Three morrises also accompanied
• Cf. ch. vi, p. 172. 2 Cf. p. 1 16. 5 Cf. ch. xxiv.

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127

the pageants.^ George Ferebe’s shepherd’s song, as the Queen
had crossed the Wansdyke at Bishop’s Cannings, two months
before, had striick a more up-to-date note.

In the university cities, municipal eloquence was redoubled
by that of public orators and professors. The sovereign was
expected to attend sermons and the academic exercise of
disputations, and perhaps to wind up the latter with a Latin
speech. The spectacles generally took the form of regular
plays in Latin and occasionally in English. As the academic
drama lies rather aside from the main purpose of this book,
I confine myself to a brief chronicle. Elizabeth’s first and
only visit to Cambridge was from 5 to 10 August 1564.^ The
plays took place in the chapel of King’s College, since the
hall had been found unsuitable, and the two provided by
the University were directed by Dr. Roger Kelke, the Master
of Magdalene, with the aid of five others, one of ^hom was
Thomas Legge of Trinity, himself a dramatist. On Sunday,
6 August, the Aulularia of Plautus was given by actors
selected from colleges other than King’s. Courtiers ignorant
of Latin were wearied, but Elizabeth sat through the three
hours* performance without sign of fatigue. On 7 August
came Dido^ a Latin tragedy by Edward Halliwell, formerly
Fellow of King’s, and on 8 August Ezechias^ an English
comedy by Nicholas Udall, who was an Oxford man. Both
these plays were performed by King’s men and both are lost.
Elizabeth’s patience was now exhausted, and she gave some
disappointment by declining to hear a Latin translation of the
Ajax Flagellifer of Sophocles, which men of various colleges
had been appointed to give on 9 August. A contemporary
letter from the Spanish ambassador gives an account of a
singular epilogue to the royal visit. On 10 August Elizabeth
had made her farewells, picking out Thomas Preston of King’s
for special favour on account of his performances both in the
disputation and as an actor in Dido, and had reached the next
stage in her progress. Sir Henry Cromwell’s at Hinchinbrook.

'■ Nichols, ii. 673 ; V. P. xiii. 36 ; Htsi. MSS. i. 107.

* There are four narratives : (a) MS. by Matthew Stokys, the University
Registrary, printed by Nichols, Ehz. i. 151, and from a transcript in
Harl. MS. 7037 (Baker MS. 10) and with a wrong asenption to N. Robin-
son, by Peck, Desiderata Curtosa, ii. 259 ; (6) Anon, in Camb. Untv.
Library MS., Ff. v. 14, f. 87, printed by Nichols, i. 183 ; (c) Abraham
Hartwell (of King's), Regina Literata (1565), reprinted by Nichols, Eliz '
(1788), i : (i) Nicholas Robinson (of Queen’s), Commentani Hexaentert
Rerum Cantahrigiae actarum, printed by Nichols, Eliz.' iii 27. The ascrip-
tion of Dido to Halliwell is due to Hatcher’s biographies of King's men
in Bodl. Rawl. MS, B. 274. Hartwell gives some analysis both of Dido
and of Ezechias.

128

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Hither she was pursued by some of the scholars with what
appears to have been a mash, originally intended to serve as
an afterpiece to the Ajax Flagellifer. They were allowed to
present it, but it proved to have been conceived in a spirit
unsuited to the colour of the Queen’s Protestantism, and gave
considerable offence. It was, in fact, a burlesque of the Mass.^
Two years later, from 31 August to 6 September 1566, it was
the turn of Oxford.® The plays were in Christ Church Hall,
and in them the University had the assistance of Richard
Edwardes, formerly Student of Christ Church, and now Master
of the Children of the Chapel Royal. At the first, a Latin
prose comedy called Marcus Geminus, on i September, the
Queen was not present. But she attended Edwardes’s Palamon
and Arcite, an English play in two parts, given on 2 and
4 September, and expressed high appreciation of the play and
the acting. The fact that three persons were killed by the fall
of a wall near the entrance door was not allowed to interfere
with the representation.® She also attended James Calfhill’s

‘ I borrow from Boas« 383, De Silva's description to the Duchess of
Parma as given in Froude's transcript (Addl. MS. 26056 A, f. 237) of the
original in the Siman9as archives. There is a translation in Sp. Papers,
i. 375. Fronde, vii. 205, paraphrases the story. After premising that
during the Queen's visit ‘ they wished to give her another representation,
which she refused in order to be no longer delayed ', and that, * those
who were so anxious for her to hear it followed her to her first stopping-
place, and so importuned her that at last she consented De Silva con-
tinues, * Entrdron los representantes en habitos de algunos de los Obispos
que estan presos ; fue el primo el de Londres [Bonner] llevando en las
manos un cordero como que le iba comiendo, y otros con otras devisas,
y uno en figura de perro con una hostia en la boca. La Reyna se enoj6
tanto segun escriben que se entr6 d priesa en su camara diciendo malas
palabras, y los que tenian las hachas, que era de noche, los dexdron
d escuras, y assl ces6 la inconsiderada y desvergon^ada representacion.*
Of course, there is nothing about this in the academic narratives. It was
an indecent proceeding, but in view of the character of the farsa or
mummery which enlivened Elizabeth's first Christmas (cf. ch. v), the
misunderstanding of her taste is perhaps explicable.

* There are five narratives : (a) Twyne MS. xvii, f. 160, in the University
archives, by Thomas Neale, Professor of Hebrew, used by A. Wood. Hist,
of Oxford, ii. 154, and Boas, 98 ; (b) Richard Stephens, A Brief Rehear sail,
a summary of (a), printed by Nichols, Eliz.^ i, 95, and C. Plummer,
Elizabethan Oxford, 193 ; (c) Twyne MS, xxi. 792, by Miles Windsor of
Corpus ; (d) Nicholas Robinson (of Queens'. Cambridge), Of the Actes done
at Oxford, printed from Harl. MS. 7033, f. 142, by Nichols, i. 229, and
Plummer, 173 ; (e) John Bereblock (of Exeter), Commentarii de Rebus
Gestis Oxoniae, printed by T. Heame (1729) and Nichols, Eliz.^ i. 35,
and from Bodl. Addl, MS. A. 63, by Plummer, 113, and translated by ’
W. Y. Durand in M.L, A. xx. 502. Bereblock gives full analyses of the
plays. Boas, 106, adds extracts from a Christ Church account of the
expenditure.

* Bereblock (Plummer, 128) says, * Hoc malum quamvis potuit com-

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129

Latin tragedy Progne on 5 September. The plays were all
written by Christ Church men, bAt the actors appear to have
been drawn in part from other colleges. John Rainolds of
Corpus, afterwards a bitter opponent of the academic stage,
played Hippolyta in Palamon and Arcite} All the plays are
unfortunately lost. The Spanish ambassador reported that
there had been nothing about religion in them, and delivered
himself of the compliment, ‘ Memorabilia profecto sunt
Oxoniensium spectacula More deserving, more felicitous,
or less audacious than Cambridge, Oxford received the honour
of a second royal visit in 1592.® It lasted from 22 to 28
September.^ The plays, given on 24 and 26 September, were
Leonard Hutten’s Bellum Grammaticale and Gager’s Rivales,
Both performances were at Christ Church, but probably actors
from other colleges took part. A jaundiced Cambridge visitor
described them as ‘ but meanely performed *. Elizabeth,
however, was gracious, and before departing ‘ schooled ’ John
Rainolds, who had recently been fulminating against Gager,

munem laetitiam contaminare, nihilominus tamen eandem commaculare
non potuit. Ad spectacula itaqtie omnes, alieno iam periculo cautiores,
revertuntur

‘ Cf. Boas, 106, 390.

* Sp, Papers, i. 578 ; cf. Boas, 385.

* Sometimes the Chancellor brought distinguished foreign visitors, who
were entertained with plays. In May 1569 Thomas Cooper, Vice-
Chancellor and Dean of Christ Church, wrote to Leicester (Pepys MSS.
* 55 )» proposing ’ a playe or shew of the destruction of Thebes, and the
contention between Eteocles and Polynices for the governement therof
for a projected visit on 15 May by Odet de Coligny, Cardinal de ChAtillon,
and asking help ‘ for provision for some apparaile ' (not * apparaiti as
the Hist. MSS. report on the Pepys MSS. has it). It is not certain that
the visit actually took place (Boas, 158). But in 1583 Leicester brought
Albertus Alasco, Prince Palatine of Siradia in Poland, who saw the Rivales
and Dido of William Gager (q.v.) on ii and 12 June. The plays were
given at Christ Church by men of that and other colleges, with the
assistance of George Peele (Boas, 179, from Holinshed and academic
archives). In Jan. 1585 Leicester came again, with Pembroke and Philip
Sidney, and saw Gager's Meleager at Christ Church, and possibly also
a comedy at Magdalen. Apparel was borrowed from John Lyly, who was
then connected with the Blackfriars theatre (Boas, 192, from academic
archives).

^ There is only one narrative, by Phihp Stringer (of St. John's, Cam-
bridge), printed by Nichols, Eliz.^, and Plummer, 245. Wood, Hist, of
Oxford, ii. 248, follows an independent source. Boas, 252, makes some
additions from academic archives, and cites from Twyne MS. xvii, f. 174,
an order that ' the schollers which cannot be admitted to see the playes,
doo not make any outcries or undecent noyses about the hall stayres or
within the quadrangle of Christchurch, as usuaUy they were wont to doo '.
This was repeated at the visit of 1605. John Sanford's Apollints et
Musarum Eidyllia, reprinted by Plummer, 275, contains verses laudatory
of the various guests.

2229*1 K

130 THE COURT

for ‘ his obstinate preciseness *. It was, perhaps, as a result
of the mirth shown at Oxf<£rd, that both Universities were
invited to produce English plays at Court during the following
Christmas. This, however, Cambridge at any rate declined
to do, giving as their excuse the shortness of time, but more
particularly the customary limitation of their academic plays
to the Latin tongue.^ There is no evidence, and little proba-
bility, that Oxford were any more amenable.

James passed through the outskirts of Oxford in 1604, but
plague deferred his formal visit until 1605, when he came
with the Queen and Henry, and stayed from 27 to 31 August.^
As he came down St. Giles’, he was greeted from St. John’s
with Matthew Gwynne’s device of the Tres Sibyllae, The
plays were in Christ Church hall, and apparel was hired from
the King’s Revels company in London. Inigo Jones, ‘ a great
traveller ’, was employed to furnish special machinery for
changing the scenes, but opinions differed as to his success,
and also as to the extent to which the King kept awake during
the performances. Of these there were four. On 27 August
a piece, variously named Alba and VertumnuSy and written
in part by Robert Burton, was acted by Thomas Goodwin
and other Christ Church men.^ On 28 August actors from
various colleges gave an Ajax Flagellifery not apparently
a translation from Sophocles, but an independent play. On
29 August St. John’s men gave a play by Gwynne, also called
VertumnuSy sive Annus Recurrens. These three, of which only
the last survives, were in Latin. On 30 August, for the sake
of the ladies, the fourth play, again by men of various colleges.

^ M. S. C. i. 198, from Lansd. MS. 71, f. 204.

* There are four narratives : (a) Anthony Nixon, The Oxford Triumph
(1605, S. R. 19 Sept. 1605) ; (h) Isaac Wake, Rex PlcUonicus, sive Musae
Regnantes (1607) ; {c) a Cambridge report, probably by Philip Stringer,
printed from Harl. MS. 7044, by Leland, Coll. ii. 626, and Nichols, i. 530 ;
{d) a letter from John Chamberlain in Winwood, ii. 140. F. S. Boas and
W. W. Greg (M 5 . C. i. 247) print schedules of the apparel and necessaries
obtained from Kirkham and Kendall of the Queen’s Revels, and from
one Matthew Fox. They were partly for The Qt 4 een*s Arcadia, partly,
I think, for Ajax Flagelhfer, and partly for Alba. Provision was made
for a magician, and ' those scenes of the Magus *, for which Robert Burton
tells his brother (Nichols, iv. 1067) that he was thanked by Dr. King,
Dean of Christ Church, were presumably in Alba. This is Stringer's name
for the first play. Wake calls it Vertumnus, but it is clear from his analyses
that it is distinct from Gwynne’s, which he calls Annus Recurrens.
Stringer’s rather critical narrative contrasts with the self-complacency of
the Oxford writers. He tells us how bored the King was and how the
Queen and the ladies disliked the almost naked man in Alba.

^ Goodwin’s performance was made an excuse for securing the King’s
recommendation for his election as a Student of Christ Church ( 5 . P. D.
A dill Jac. /, xxxvii. 66, 67, 70).

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131

was in English. It was Daniers Arcadia Reformed^ afterwards
published as The Queer! s Arcadia. The King was not present
on this occasion. It is a little surprising that he did not
visit Cambridge until 1615. He had been preceded by Henry,
who was there with the Elector Palatine in 1613, and saw
performances by Trinity men in their college hall of Samuel
Brooke’s Adelphe and Scyros on 2 and 3 March respectively.^
James went from Royston, and stayed from 7 to ii March
1615.2 The plays, given in Trinity College hall, were suc-
cessively Edward Cecil’s Latin Aemilia^ by St. John’s men,
which is lost, Ruggle’s Ignoramus, by men from Clare Hall
and other minor colleges, and Tomkis’s Albumazar and
Brooke’s Melanthe, both by Trinity men. King’s had pre-
pared Phineas Fletcher’s Sicelides, but the King did not stay
long enough to hear it. The visit evoked an outburst of
satirical verses, both from Oxford and from the lawyers, who
were stung by the wit of Ignoramus, with which the King was
so pleased that, after a vain attempt to get the actors to
Whitehall, he paid another visit to Cambridge, and saw it
again on 13 May.^ In March 1616 Cambridge men played
before him at Royston ; the name of the play is rot known.^
Oxford did not get its chance again until 1618, which falls
outside the scope of this record.

The opportunities for spectacular display, which pro-
vincial towns enjoyed during a progress, fell to London
chiefly at the time of a coronation, when on the day before
the actual ceremony the sovereign passed in state from
the Tower to Westminster, through the principal streets
of the city which claimed to be, in a special sense, the royal

* Birch, i. 214; Winwood, iii. 441 ; Nichols, iv. 1087, trom Racket's
Life of Williams.

* Birch, i. 303 ; Stowe, Annales (1631), 1023 ; Hardwicke Papers, i. 394 ;
Truth Brought to Light, 64 ; Nichols, iii. 43. The names of the plays are
given in a MS. penes Sir Edward Dering, printed by S. Pegge in Gent. Mag.
(May 1756) and Hawkins, Ignoramus, xxx. I adopt the dates of this
MS., which fit better into James’s movements than the 12-15 March sug-
gested by Chamberlain's letter in Birch, i. 303. The Vice-Chancellor
ordered * that noe Graduate of the Universitie under the degree of Master
of Arts, or fellow-commoner, presume to come into the streets neare
Trinity Colledge in the tymes the Comedyes are actinge ; or after the
Stage- Keepers be come forth ; nor that any Schollar or Student, but those
onely before excepted, by any meanes presume or attempte to come within
the said Colledge or Hall to heare any of the said Comedyes '.

* Birch, i. 360, 361 ; Hawkins, Ignoramus, cxix, from a narrative by
James Tabor, Registraiy.

* Birch, i. 395, 397. Can the play have been Susenbrotus, for which .
there seems no room in the visit of 161 5, although the MS. claims a perform-
ance before James and Charles at Trinity in * 161 5 ' ?

THE COURT

I3«

‘ Chamber The outstanding architectural features of these
streets, St. Paul’s, the gates It Ludgate and Temple Bar, the
conduits in Cornhill and Fleet Street, the great and little con-
duits, the Standard, and the Cross in Cheapside, were recognized
stations for music, speechifying, and pageantry. At some of
them temporary arches, adorned with symbolical devices and
hung with verses, spanned the highway. When Elizabeth
started, in a slight snow-storm, on 14 January 1558, the City
companies, in their black and red hoods, lined both sides of the
way from Fenchurch to the Cross. The Queen, a coronetted
and golden figure, rode in a litter, surrounded by her train
of pensioners bearing their axes, and yeomen of the guard in
their scarlet liveries with the Tudor rose and crown upon
their backs. Behind came the Master of the Horse, leading
a white hackney, and the Lords of the Council.* There were
seven pageants, each with its verses in English or Latin and
a child for interpreter. At the first, on a scaffold near Fen-
church, the child delivered a speech of welcome. At the
upper end of Gracechurch Street was an arch bearing * The
Uniting of the two Houses of Lancaster and York ’ ; at the
Cornhill conduit another, with * The Seat of Worthy Govern-
ance * ; at the great conduit a third, with ‘ The Eight
Beatitudes ’. The first bore representations of Henry VII,
Henry VIII, and Elizabeth herself ; the other two allegorical
figures of the morality type. At the Cross stood the Mayor
and Aldermen, with a speech by the Recorder, and a thousand
marks in a purse. At the little conduit was the fourth and
principal arch, with sterile and green mounts symbolizing
* A Ruinous and a Flourishing Commonweal ’ ; and Time
and Truth presented the Queen as she went by with an
English Bible. At the door of the school in St. Paul’s Church-
yard, a boy of Colet’s foundation delivered a Latin speech.
At the Fleet Street conduit was ‘ Deborah, with her Estates,
consulting for the good Government of Israel *. At St. Dun-
stan’s church was another speech by a child of the hospital.
And, finally, at Temple Bar stood those ancient folk-figures
and palladia of the City, without whose beneficent presence
no holiday could be complete, the giants Gotmagot and
Corineus.® When James was crowned on 25 July 1603, a state
entry on the traditional lines was planned, but when the
arches were already up it was decided that the risk of plague
was too' great, and the ceremony was put off, first to the

1 The term recalls the old use of the Camera as a treasury ; cf. ch. ii.
Similarly Bristol claimed to be the ' chamber ' of a queen consort ; cf.
the patent to the Children of Bristol (ch. xii).

* Cf. ch. xxiv. » Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 172.

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t33

opening of a parliament contemplated in October, and ulti-
mately to the following spring.^ It took place on 15 March
1604. Jonson, Dekker, and Middleton were employed to
furnish verses and devices, and the structure of the five
pageants provided by the City was entrusted to Stephen
Harrison, a joiner.^ There were three additional ones, of
which two were contributed by the Italian and Dutch traders
in London, and the third, erected outside the City boundary,
by the City of Westminster and the Savoy Liberty. The
Venetian ambassador was perhaps prejudiced in reporting
that the Italian pageant excelled the others in design and
workmanship. But all the pageants, although they were
enlivened by speeches and songs, for which the services of
trained actors were enlisted, appear to have relied more upon
architectural embellishment and less upon allegorical symbol-
ism than those of 1559.® The order was as follows : At
Fenchurch were the Genius of London and Thamesis, imper-
sonated by Edward Alleyn of the Prince’s men and a boy
from the Queen’s Revels ; at the Exchange the Dutch and
Italian arches, in neither of which a definite theme is trace-
able ; at Soper Lane end * Arabia Britannica ’, with a speech
by a Paul’s choir-boy and the song ‘ Troynovant is now no
more a city *. In Cheapside stood once more the civic
dignitaries, with a speech by the Recorder and three cups
of gold for the King, Queen, and Prince. At the Cross were
Sylvanus and Vertumnus, with the ‘ Garden of Eirene and
Euporia In Paul’s Churchyard the choristers sang, and a boy
from the grammar school was ready with his Latin. The
pageant at Fleet conduit, where William Borne of the Prince’s
had a speech as Zeal, represented the ‘ Globe of the World ’ ;
that at Temple Bar the * Temple of Janus ’ ; that of West-
minster and the Savoy in the Strand the Rainbow, Sun,
Moon, and Pleiades. Jonson seems to have been responsible

^ V. P. X. 64, 67, 74 ; Birch, i. 8, 9. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton
(lo July 1603). ‘ Our pageants are pretty forward, but most of them are
such small timbered gentlemen that they cannot last long, and 1 doubt,
if the plague cease not the sooner, they will rot and sink where they stand/
The double preparation must have cost the City something. There was
a levy, amounting to £12 10s, on some of the guilds, in 1603, and in
February 1604 another £400 had to be raised * for the full performance
and finishing of the pageants Towards this the Carpenters paid £2,
but in ail they had to pay an additional £S 35. 4d. in 1604. There must
have been protests, for the wardens of the Brewers were imprisoned for
refusing to pay a levy of £50 (Jupp, The Carpenters^ 68, 294 ; Young, The
Barber-Surgeons, no ; Williams, The Founders, 222).

* Cf. ch. xxiv.

• Dekker sadly records that a great part of the speeches was left
unspoken, lest they should be tedious to James.

m

THE COURT

for the devices at Fenchurch, Temple Bar, and the Strand ;
Dekker for those at Soper Lane and the Cross ; Middleton
for at any rate a part of that in Fleet Street. A few London
entertainments of less importance are upon record. When
Elizabeth first came to the Tower on 28 November 1558,
there were ‘ in serten plasses chylderyn with speches, and
odur places, syngyng and playing with regalles When
James first came to London on 7 May 1603, Dekker had
prepared a show of the Genius Loci and Saints George and
Andrew for performance at the Bars beyond Bishopsgate,
which he afterwards printed ; but he was disappointed, for
James entered by another route, direct from Stamford Hill
to the Charterhouse.^ On 31 July 1606 he brought the King
of Denmark to see the City, and there was an arch with
Neptune, Mulciber, Concord, and the Genius of London, and
a Summer Bower with a shepherd and shepherdess on the
Fleet Street conduit.^ On 16 July 1607 he dined with Henry
at the hall of the Merchant Taylors, who spent £ 1,000 on
the festivity. Ben Jonson wrote verses to be spoken by John
Rice, then a boy actor at the Globe, as an angel of gladness,
with a taper of frankincense in his hand, and the hall was
filled with music. There were lutenists in the windows, wind-
instruments on the screen, and three singers in a ship hanging
aloft. The court musicians, Thomas Lupo and Mr. Lanier,
and Nathaniel Giles and the Chapel were amongst those who
made melody.^ London was to the fore again in welcome to
Prince Henry on his creation as Prince of Wales, sending the
barges of the Lord Mayor and the companies to meet him,
as he came up by river from Richmond on 31 May 1610,
with Corinea on a whale to offer salutation on behalf of
Cornwall at Chelsea, and Amphion on a dolphin to do the
same for Wales at Whitehall. The speeches were written by
Anthony Munday and delivered by Richard Burbage and
John Rice.® A month earlier, on 23 April, another show in
Henry’s honour had been held at Chester. It was devised

1 Machyn. 180.

* See ch. xxiv, s.v. Dekker, Coronation Entertainment, On 15 April 1605
the Spanish ambassador provoked a riot by * joys and shews * to celebrate
the birth of a Spanish prince (Ixxige, iii. 147 ; Stowe, Annaies, 862).

* V. P. X. 384 ; Nichols, iv. 1074.

* Clode, Early History of the Merchant Taylors, i. 276, gives many
details from records of the company, including the item, * To M'. Hemmyngs
for his direccion of his boy that made the speech to his Majesty 40s,,
and $s, given to John Rise the speaker

* Cf. ch. xxiii. The entry of payments to Burbage and Rice, trumpeted
as a discovery by C. W. Wallace in The Times for 28 March 1913, was in
fact published by Halliwell-Phillipps in the Athenaeum for 19 May 1888 ;
it is also in Stopes, Burbage, 108.

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135

by Robert Amerie, an ex-sheriff of the town, and consisted
of a horse-race on the Roodeyt«, after a procession in which
the bearers of the bells that served as prizes were accompanied
by St. George and his dragon pursuing a Green man or
‘ wodwose *, while speeches were uttered by Fame, Mercury,
Chester, Britain, Cambria, Rumour and Peace, and Joy com-
posed a d^bat between Love and Envy.^

Even in the absence of the sovereign, London had pageantry
for its own delight ; folk-pageantry in the May-games, mor-
rises and lords of misrule, which sometimes made their way
to Court ; ^ municipalized folk-pageantry in the Midsummer
and St. Peter’s Eve ‘ watches ’, which barely survived into
Elizabeth’s reign ; ^ municipal pageantry fully established in
the ceremony which has come down to our own day of the
Lord Mayor’s show. The Mayor was installed on St. Simon
and St. Jude’s Day, 28 October, and on 29 October he went
by water to Westminster Hall to be admitted before the
barons of the Exchequer in the Exchequer chamber. On his
return he was met by his guildsmen and other citizens at the
waterside, and escorted to dinner in the Guildhall, and after
dinner to service in St. Paul’s and back to his own house.
There had been pageants on this occasion in the fifteenth
century, but these were suppressed in 1481, and during the
earlier part of the sixteenth century the spectacular element
was limited to a ‘ foyst or wafter ’ upon the river, such as
that with a device of a crowned falcon on a mount environed
with white and red roses, which the City provided by royal
command for the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533.^ But
shortly after, and perhaps as a result of, the discontinuance
of the ‘ watches ’ in 1538, the installation pageant makes its
appearance again. It can be traced in 1540, and then, with
the accompaniment of speeches, fireworks, devils, and ‘ wod-
woses *, in the pages of Machyn’s diary during most years from

^ Cf. ch. xxiv.

2 Machyn, 191, 196, 201, 261, 273 ; cf. App. A (1559-1561).

® Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 165. 382. Machyn, 287, records a watch with
a * castylle ' at the Tower on 28 June 1562. There was another on 28 June
1564, which Elizabeth saw privately from Baynard's Castle (Sp. P. i. 366 ;
cf. App. A). Puttenham, 165, speaks of * these midsommer pageants in
London, where to make the people wonder are set forth great and vglie
Gyants marching as if they were aliue, and armed at all points, but within
they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow, which the shrewd boys
vnderpeermg, do guilefully discouer and turne to a great derision

* Sharpe, Letter Book, L. 187, prints an order of 23 Oct. 1481 forbidding
from thenceforth any ' disguysyng nor pageoun when the Mayor went
from his house to the water or the water to his house, * as it hath been used
nowe of late afore this time *. Halle, ii. 232, describes the reception of
Anne Boleyn.

THE COURT

136

1553 to 1562.^ Many details are preserved of the Merchant
Taylors’ pageant of 1561 fot Sir William Harper, and of the
Ironmongers’ pageant of 1566 for Sir James Draper, in the
device of which James Peele, clerk of Christ’s Hospital, and
father of George Peele, had a hand. On both occasions the
speeches and songs were entrusted to boys from Westminster,
under the * M** of the quirysters ’, John Taylor.^ Some
speeches are preserved from the Merchant Taylors’ pageant
of St. John Baptist for Sir Thomas Roe in 1568, while James
Peele was again engaged by the Ironmongers to prepare
a device, which, however, came to nothing, for Sir Alexander
Avenon in 1569.^ It must be doubtful whether there was
a pageant in every year, but when William Smythe described
the installation ceremonies in 1575, he included as regular
features the ‘ devells and wyldmen ’ which met the returning
mayor at Paul’s Wharf, and ‘ the pageant of Tryumphe
rychly decked, whervppon by certayne fygures and wrytinges
(partly towchinge the name of the sayd mayor) some matter
towchinge justice and the office of a magestrate is repre-
sented ’.^ Von Wedel saw the Drapers’ pageant for Sir
Thomas Pullison in 1584.® Custom seems to have assigned
the provision of the pageant to the * bachelors ’ of the Lord

' Machyn, 47, 72, 96, 117, 155, 270, 294. In 1553 were a * duyllyll '
and ' ii grett wodyn, with ii grett clubes all in grene, and with skwybes
bornyng For 1540, cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 166. A fragment of a Salters'
pageant, printed by E. D. Adams in M. L. N. xxxii. 285, from T, C. C.
MS. B. 15, 39, may belong to 1530 or 1542, when they had Mayors.

* Clode, ii. 262 ; Nicholl, Ironmongers, 84 ; cf. ch. xii (Westminster).
The subject in 1566 is not recorded. Richard Baker, painter-stainer, had
;£i8 for the pageant and everything except the children and their apparel ;
John Tailor 405. to find six children * as well for the speeches as songs ' ;
James Pele 305. * for his devise and paynes in the paggent ' ; and Thomas
Giles of Lombard Street (cf. chh. iii, v) £$ los. for apparel. The company
paid 55. ‘to the prynter for printing of poses speches and songs, that
were spoken and songe by the children in the pagent '.

* Clode, Memorials, 115 ; Nicholl, Ironmongers, 97, ' Paid unto James
Pele and Peter Baker, for the devise of a pageant, wMch tok none effecte,
xxvj*. viij<i.'

* W. Smythe, A breffe description of London (1575) ; cf. Mediaeval
Stage, ii. 165. Dramatic allusions are 2 Promos and Cassandra, i. 6,
' [Enterl Two men, apparrelled lyke greene men at the Mayor feast, with
clubbes of fyreworke ' ; Cobbler's Prophecy, 469, * comes there a Pageant
by, He stand out of the green mens way for burning my vestment ' ;
Dutch Courtesan, iii. i, 1 17, ‘all will scarce make me so high as one of the
giants' stilts that stalks before my Lord Mayor’s pageant * ; Northward
Hoe, ii. I, p. 195. * Simon and Jude's gentlemen ushers '.

^ 2 R. Hist, Soc, Trans, ix. 252, ‘ a representation in the shape of a house
with a pointed roof painted in blue and golden colours and ornamented
with garlands, on which sat some young girls in fine apparel, one holding
a book, another a pair of scales, the third a sceptre. What the others
had I forget.* He gives full details of ail the installation ceremonies.

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137

Mayor’s company, that is to say, those freemen who were
not yet advanced to be members of the ‘ livery ’ or governing
body. The Ironmongers paid for the printing of their pageant
in 1566, but the first printed description now extant is that
of the Skinners’ pageant for V/oolstan Dixie in 1585, which
was written by George Peele. Peele seems to have inherited
his father’s connexion, for he had, according to the Merry
Jests^ ‘ all the oversight of the pageants ’, and certainly he
devised the Drapers’ pageant for Martin Calthorpe in 1588,
which is now lost, and the Descensus Astraeae of the Salters
for William Webbe in 1591. The Fishmongers’ pageant for
John Allot in 1590 was, however, by one T. Nelson, a stationer.
The absence of Elizabethan prints later than these does not
necessarily mean that pageants fell out of use. There was
one in 1600 ; ^ the Merchant Taylors had one for Sir Robert
Lee in 1602 ; there would have been one in 1603 but for the
plague ; and there was probably one in 1604.^ On the other
hand, it can hardly be inferred from the chaff of Munday as
a * peeking pageanter ’ in HistriomasHx and as ‘ pageant-poet
to the city of Milan * in The Case is Altered that he stepped
regularly into Peele’s shoes about 1591. Jonson’s reference,
at least, is subsequent to Monday’s first ‘ book ’ of a pageant,
which was, so far as we know, the Merchant Taylors’ Triumphs
of Reunited Britannia for Sir Leonard Holliday in 1605. I do
not know on what evidence Campbell^ or the Ironmongers^
Fair Field, for Thomas Campbell in 1609, the only known
copy of which has lost its title-page, is sometimes ascribed
to him. But he was responsible for the Goldsmiths’ Chryso-
Thriambos for Sir James Pemberton in 1611, the Drapers’
Himatia Poleos for Sir Thomas Hayes in 1614 and their
Metropolis Coronata for Sir John Jolles in 1615, and the
Fishmongers* Chrysanaleia for John Leman in 1616. His
chief competitors in civic favour were Dekker and Middleton,
the former of whom prepared the Merchant Taylors* Troja
Nova Triumphans for Sir John Swinnerton in 1612, and the
latter the Triumphs of Truth for Sir Thomas Middleton in
1613, to the * book ’ of which he annexed an account of
a quite exceptional entertainment on occasion of the opening
of Hugh Middleton’s New River on 29 September 1613,

^ Chamberlain, 93.

* Clode, Early History, i. 264, 390, cites payments for a ship, a pageant,
a lion, and a camel, and to Mr. Haines, schoolmaster of the Merchant Taylors
school, for a wagon and the apparel of ten scholars, who represented Apollo
and the Muses before the Mayor in Cheapside. Young, Barber-Surgeons,
III, prints the Lord Mayor's letter of 22 Oct. 1603 directing that there
should be no show that year. Felix Kingston entered ' a thing touching
the pagent ' in S. R. on 29 Oct. 1604 (Arber, iii. 273).

THE COURT

138

Middleton’s title-page refers scornfully to the * common
writer * of mayoral pageants, which may perhaps indicate
Munday. A full analysis of all this municipal imagery would
be extremely tedious. The original single pageant with its
devils and ‘ wodwoses * underwent much elaboration in the
seventeenth century. ‘ By this light says a character in
Greenes Tu Qtcoque (1611-12), ‘ I do not think but to be
Lord Mayor of London before I die, and have three pageants
carried before me, besides a ship and an unicorn.’ Dekker’s
Troja Nova Triumphans has three movable ‘ land-triumphs ’,
a chariot of Neptune, a chariot of Virtue, and a House of
Fame, which met the Mayor successively at Paul’s Chain,
Paul’s Churchyard, and the Cross in Cheapside, while the
little conduit was transformed into a Castle of Envy, and
met an assault with fireworks. Sometimes the old ‘ foist ’
was revived, and part of the spectacle took place on the
water. Or one of the land pageants was designed in the form
of a ship. There were personages mounted on strange beasts.
Speeches and dialogues afforded opportunities for laudation
of the Lord Mayor and his brethren. There was generally
some theme bearing upon the history of the company or the
industry to which it was related. The Fishmongers made
play, both in 1590 and 1616, with Sir William Walworth ;
the Drapers, both in 1614 and 1615, with Sir Henry Fitz
Alwine, and with the Ram with the Golden Fleece. The
Merchant Taylors, on whose roll Prince Henry had been
inscribed at the dinner of 1607, proudly displayed an imper-
sonation of him in 1611. Often the mimesis was renewed on
the way to St. Paul’s in the afternoon, or at the Lord Mayor’s
house in the evening. The Ironmongers have preserved an
interesting series of coloured designs for Chrysanaleia, the
notes on which indicate that the pageants were preserved as
permanent decorations for the company’s hall. The ship,
which held musicians at the Merchant Taylors* dinner of
1607, was probably a relic of their pageant of 1602.

The growing maritime power of England during the six-
teenth century and the significance of the river as a highway
between London and the palaces up and down stream led
naturally to a development of pageantry by water. There
was a water triumph, with an assault of a castle, on Mid-
summer Day, 1561, and another, arranged by Captain
Stukeley, when Elizabeth went down to Greenwich in June
1563.^ Christian of Denmark gave James a show of the ‘ Burn-
ing of the Seven Deadly Sins ’ in ‘ wildfire * near his flag-ship
at Gravesend on ii August 1606.^ The creation of Henry was
^ Machyn, 261, 309. * Stowe, Annales (1615), 887.

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139

celebrated by a mock sea-fight between merchantmen and
Turkish pirates on 6 June 1610, and the effect of this spectacle
was also enhanced by a display of fireworks. On the previous
31 May Henry had been given the welcome of the City, as
he came up the river, with a device by Anthony Munday,
in which Burbage and Rice of the King’s men rode upon two
great fishes to deliver the speeches. Burbage, as Amphion,
represented Wales, and Rice, as Corinea, Cornwall.^ Similarly
the festivities at the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding in 1613
included a fight between Venetian and Turkish galleys on
II February and a firework representation of St. George
delivering the Amazonian Queen Lucida from Mango the
Necromancer.^ The City had to find a pension for a man
who was maimed in this triumph.® Bristol, the second sea-
port of the realm, also favoured water shows, welcoming
Elizabeth in 1574 with an assault on the forts of Peace and
Feeble Policy, and Anne in 1613 with a version of the more
modern theme of merchantman and pirate.^ We do not know
the nature of the Devises of Warre prepared by Thomas
Churchyard for one of Sir Thomas Gresham’s entertainments
of Elizabeth at Osterley ; but an example of the conversion
of military training into mimesis is afforded by the archery
show of Prince Arthur with his Knights of the Round Table,
which was displayed by Hugh Offley before the Queen between
Merchant Taylors and Mile End in 1587.®

More than two centuries before this, when Edward III
associated this same Round Table with the foundation of his
chivalric order of the Garter, pageantry had already begun
to cast its mantle over the mediaeval exercises of knightly
feats of arms. As the actual practice of warfare dissociated
itself more and more from the domination of the mail-clad
horseman, the spectacular tendency had naturally grown.
Not that, even at Whitehall, the tournament had ever become
a mere pageant and nothing more. It had still its value,
both as part of the courtly training of a gentleman and as
a test of physical endurance ; and it was chiefly about the

^ Cf. ch. xxiii.

2 John Taylor, Hemfen*s Blessing and Earth's Joy (Nichols, li. 527).
The use of fireworks at Kenilworth in 1575 and Elvetham in 1591, with
a miniature sea-fight at the latter, has already been noted. An undated
device for three days’ fireworks by an Italian before the Queen, * in the
meadow * in the courtyard of the Palace ' in the river ' (Pepys MSS.
178) may belong to 1575, or possibly to the Warwick visit of 1572, at
which a firework assault upon a fort in the meadow below the castle is
recorded by La Mothe, v. 96.

* Af. S. C. i. 89. * Cf. ch. xxiv.

* Nichols, EUz. ii. 529, from a MS. in private hands.

140 THE COURT

preliminaries, the challenge and the entrance of the knights
into the lists, that the decorative fancy of the Renaissance
gave itself free play. The double appeal of vigorous exercise
and sumptuous spectacle was irresistible to the youthful
temperament of Henry VIII, and the pages of Halle gleam
with his tiltings as Cceur Loyal in 1511, of which a fine
heraldic record is preserved, and with the international
splendours of the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520.^ It
was largely to a desire to maintain the tradition of the spear
that the existence of the Pensioners as an element in the
royal household must be ascribed. Elizabeth had much of
her father’s blood in her, and to the end took delight in the
strength of a man and a horse, so that it was still possible
for an aspiring youth, such as Sir Henry Lee or Sir Robert
Carey, to win his way to Court favour by the accuracy of his
seat or the appropriateness of his trappings, no less than by
his proficiency in the gentler antics of the mask. The rules
for courtly combat had been laid down by John Tiptoft,
Earl of Warwick and Constable of England in 1466, and
revised for Elizabeth in 1562.^ The generic term ‘ jousts of
peace ’ covered three distinct varieties of exercise. The most
important was the tilt, in which horsemen met in the shock
of blunted spears across the ‘ tilt * or toiUy a barrier covered
with cloths, which ran longitudinally down the centre of the
* lists * or space staked out for the encounter. A record was
kept of the courses run, in which marks were credited to the
competitors for spears fairly broken or for ‘ attaints ’ on the
head or body, and corresponding deductions made for spears
ill broken. The tourney was also on horseback, with swords
instead of spears ; while in the foot-tourney or ‘ barriers ’
the assailants were dismounted and fought alternately with
push of pike and stroke of sword across a wooden obstacle.*

1 Halle, i. 22, 189 ; Cripps-Day, 118 (misdated 1510). The illuminated
roll of 151X is engraved in Vetusta Monumenia, i, pll. xxi-xxvi. Some
interesting documents on early Tudor tilting are given in Cripps-Day, xliii,
from Harl MS. 69 (The Book of Certaine Triumphes).

• The rules are extant in Heralds* College MSS. I. 26, M. 6 ; Harl. MSS.
69, 1354. 1776, 2358, 2413, 6064; Bodl. Ashm. MS. 763; versions are
print^ in Vetusta Monumenta, i ; Grose and Astle, Antiquarian Repertory,
i. 144; Meyrick, Antient Armor, ii. 179; Harington.i. i ; Cripps-Day, xxvii.
Viscount Dillon prints (Arch. Ivii. 29) an illuminated fifteenth-century
collection of ordinances of chivalry which belonged to Prince Henry.

* Dillon, An Elizabethan Armourer* s Album (Arch. Journal, lii. 1 13),
Tilting in Tudor Times (A. J. Iv. 296), Barriers and Foot-Combats (A. J.
Ixi. 276), Armour and Arms in Shakespeare (A. J. Ixv. 270) ; C, ffoulkes.
Jousting Cheques of the Sixteenth Century (A rchaeologia, Ixiii. 31). W. Segar,
Honor, Military and Ciuill (1602), iii. 54, records a number of Elizabethan
jousts, or, as he calls them, * triumphs *. Dillon (A . J. Iv. 303) reproduces
drawings of a tilt, tourney, and barriers by William Smith (c. 1597).

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141

The tilt and tourney took place by daylight. Henry VIII
constructed a tiltyard in Whitehall, which was improved and
closed in by Elizabeth in 1561.^ It ran between the highway
and St. James’s Park, from the stables on the site of the
present Admiralty to the tennis court and cockpit on the
site of the present Treasury buildings, and at the south end
was a gallery for spectators, communicating by another across
the highway with the privy apartments. The sentries in the
courtyard of the Horse Guards have been officially known to
recent times as the Tiltyard guards. There were permanent
tiltyards also at Greenwich and at Hampton Court ; at the
latter spectators were accommodated in five small towers, of
which one still survives. ^ The less serious exercise of the
barriers was sometimes conducted by torchlight, and even
within doors, on the floor of a banqueting house.® Thus it
could be introduced, in a purely mimetic form, as an episode
in a mask, or even a play.^ Tilts took place in almost every
year of Elizabeth’s reign.® The custom was for a few picked
champions to issue a challenge for a given day, on which
they would be prepared to meet the onset of all who chose
to offer themselves as ‘ answerers ’ or defendant?. Sussex,
Leicester, Hunsdon, and of the next generation Oxford and
Arundel, are prominent amongst the challengers. I do not
find that any particular season was at first especially appro-
priated to tilts. There was often one early in the new year,
but just as often one in the spring or summer. But at some
date, possibly as early as 1570, and almost certainly as early
as 1581, Sir Henry Lee was forward in establishing an annual
tilt on Queen’s Day, the anniversary of the accession on
17 November. He may have enrolled some kind of guild
of filters ; certainly he undertook to appear personally as
challenger year by year, and for this purpose received or
assumed the designation of Knight of the Crown. In his
devices he appears under the personal name of Loricus.®

' W. L. Spiers in L. T. R. vii. 62 ; Machyn, 269.

* E. Law, Hampton Court, i. 135, 206.

* Segar (Nichols, ii. 335) describes a tourney, presumably a foot-toumey,
at Whitehall by night before the French ambassador, Francois de Mont-
morency, in June 1572, with the yeomen of the guard holding * an infinite
number of torches on the terrace and in the preaching place

* The play of Paris and Vtenna on 19 Feb. 1572 included a triumph
with hobby-horses * where Paris wan the christall sheelde for Vienna
at the turneye and barryers ' (Feuillerat, 141). A barriers was also fought
li^ Amazons and Knights in a mask of ii Jan. 1579 (Feuillerat, 287).

* Cf. App. A.

* Cf. ch. xxiv. The date at which the annual tilt began is not clear. It
cannot be earlier than the institution of Queen’s Day itself (1570? cf. p. i8),
but as that is said to have originated at Oxford, hard by Woodstock, the

142

THE COURT

Only occasional examples of the pageantry used at tilts are
upon record. An account o£‘the proceedings on the occasion
of the wedding of Ambrose Earl of Warwick and Anno
Russell, daughter of the Earl of Bedford, on ii November
1565 will show how it was introduced. The challenge took
place in August, at the churching of the Princess Cecilia of
Baden. York Herald introduced Richard Edwardes of the
Chapel, who assumed the character of a post sent from four
strange knights, and announced their challenge to be defended
before the Queen and Cecilia in November. On ii November
the Queen was in the gallery at the end of the tiltyard.
Edwardes entered with a trumpeter, and delivered another
speech. Then the challengers rode in from the mews, each
accompanied by a patron and by an Amazon with his spare
horse. They circled round the tilt and took up their position
at the Queen’s end, to await the defendants, hanging their
shields on posts beneath her window. Then the actual tilting
began. The programme, although departed from, was one
which seems to have been conventional, of one day for tilt,
one for tourney, and one for barriers.^ The women leading
the horses by their bridles perhaps appear more frequently
in earlier hastiludia than in those of the sixteenth century.^
They represent, I think, the ' damsels * of the ladies in whose
names the knights fought, and whose colours they were
accustomed to wear. Elizabeth’s personal colours for this
purpose were black and white.^ It was a function of the
ladies to award to the most successful of the defendants
a jewel provided by the challengers. The principal oppor-
tunities for mimetic speechifying were afforded by the chal-
lenge, which was sometimes delivered in person, sometimes,
as in the 1565 example, by deputy, and was probably also

two may have come into existence together. Segar, who compares Lee's
enterprise to * the Knighthood della Banda in Spaine assigns it to the
beginning of the reign. On the other hand, I have not found any actual
evidence for a tilt on 17 Nov. before 1581, although there is plenty after-
wards. The references to the matter on Lee's tombstone and in the
fragments of the Ferrers MS, do not help, unless fragment (iv) belongs
to the Woodstock entertainment of 1575, in which case the vow * not far
from hence * must be before that date. Is it possible that the tilting
at first took place at Oxford or Woodstock itself and was transferred to
Whitehall about 1581 ? In 1593, perhaps owing to the plague, it was held
at Windsor.

^ Leland, Collectanea^ ii. 666.

* Thus at a joust of 1494 (Kingsford, Chronicle, 201), ‘ iiij fa)rre ladyes . , .
ladde their Bridellis with iiij silkyn laces of white and blewe After
a joust in May 1571, ladies led the armed victors to receive their prizes
in the presence chamber (Nichols, ii. 334, from Segar).

* Cf. p. 52. Hunsdon and Dudley, as challengers, wore black and white
in 1559 ; in 1560 the heralds were in black and white (Machyn, 216, 231),

PAGEANTRY

143

hung up on the court gates, and by the shields which bore
imprese or mottoed emblems, and called for interpretation by
the squires or pages who bore them.^ Often, moreover, the
tilters themselves entered in elaborately mimetic caparisons,
incongruous enough to a modern taste with the vigorous
manly exercise to which they were a preliminary, but no
doubt attractive to that of the Renaissance, which for all its
literary talk about ‘ decorum * cared at heart but little for
congruity. The speechifying might be resumed when the
tilting was over, or at the banquet which closed the day’s
festivity.^ I gather together the few details of this tilt
pageantry which have escaped a perhaps merited oblivion.
There were speeches, and a chariot with a damsel and an

1 A galley on the waterside at Whitehall is described as hung with these
shields by Von Wedel (2 R, Hist. Soc. Trans, ix. 236) in 1584 and by
Hentzner in 1598, ‘ emblemata vana papyracea, clypei formam habentia,
quibus, adiectis symbolis, nobiles in exercitiis equestribus & gladiatoriis
uti sunt soliti, hie memoriae caussa suspensa *, and Manningham, 3,
describes * certayne devises and empresaes taken by the scucheons in
the Gallery at Whitehall ’ in 1602. The Shield Gallery was still extant
in the time of Pepys. Aubrey, Wilts. 88, says that a similar col-
lection of shields at Wilton were * of pastboard painted with their devices
and emblems, which was very pretty and ingenious Of course, these
were not used in the actual encounter. On imprese, cf. F. Brie, Shakespeare
und die Impresa-Kunst seiner Zeit (1914, Sh.~Jahrbuch, 1. 9) ; G. F. Bar-
wick, Impresas (2 Library, vii. 140) ; Lee, Shakespeare, 455. A contem-
porary treatise is Paolo Giovio, Dialogo delV Imprese Mxhtari et A morose
(1555). Good examples are afforded by Pericles, ii. ii.

* Von Wedel (loc. cit. 258) describes the accession tilt of 1584: * About
twelve o’clock the queen with her ladies placed themselves at the windows
in a long room of Whitehall palace, near Westminster, opposite the
barrier where the tournament was to be held. From this room a broad
staircase led downwards, and round the barrier stands were arranged by
boards above the ground, so that everybody by paying i2d. could get
a stand and see the play. . . . During the whole time of the tournament
all who wished to fight entered the lists by pairs, the trumpets being
blown at the time and other musical instruments. The combatants had
their servants clad in different colours ; they, however, did not enter the
barrier, but arranged themselves on both sides. Some of the servants
were disguised like savages, or hke Irishmen, with the hair hanging down
to the girdle like women, others had horse manes on their heads, some
came driving in a carriage, the horses being equipped like elephants, some
carriages were drawn by men, others appeared to move by themselves ;
altogether the carnages were of very odd appearance. Some gentlemen
had their horses with them and mounted in full armour directly from the
carriage. . . . When a gentleman with his servant approached the barrier,
on horseback or in a carriage, he stopped at the foot of the staircase leading
to the queen's room, while one of his servants in pompous attire of a special
pattern mounted the steps and addressed the queen in well-composed
verses or with a ludicrous speech, making her and her ladies laugh. When
the speech was ended he in the name of his lord offered to the queen
a costly present, which was accepted and permission given to take part
in the tournament.*

144

THE COURT

old knight made their appearance at the torchlight tourney
for the Due de Montmorency in 1572.^ In 1579 Oxford and his
fellow challengers prepared a device, ‘ prettier than it hap-

f ened to be performed *, the nature of which is not specified.*
n 1581 Arundel issued a challenge on 6 January, under the
name of Callophisus, for a tilt which took place on 22 January,
and there were ‘ devices in the mean season ’, to which some
documents in a romantic vein amongst the Lansdowne MSS,
probably belong.* The coming of the French commissioners
in 1581 was the occasion of spectacular entertainments on an
elaborate scale. There appear to have been two distinct
jousts. One, at Hampton Court, probably on 6 and 7 May,
is described in a French report. An antique tower with
a triangular lantern at the top was rolled forward. Out of
this issued a snake, which endeavoured to climb fruit-laden
trees. Then followed six eagles, concealing musicians, and
two Irish youths dressed in floating robes of silver tiffany,
with long gilded hair and mounted on gilded horses. Finally
came a triumphal car moving backwards, on which were the
Fates, holding prisoner in a golden chain a knight in brown
velvet and golden armour. The next day furnished new
devices, including little coaches drawn by asses sewn up in
white satin.^ The second, at Whitehall on 15 and 16 May,
is the famous triumph in which Sir Philip Sidney tilted before
‘ that sweet enemy, France *. The royal gallery was trans-
formed into a Fortress of Perfect Beauty, and the four
challengers, Arundel, Windsor, Sidney, and Fulke Greville,
besieged it before each day’s tilting as the Four Foster
Children of Desire, finally making their submission, through
a boy clad in ash-colour and bearing an olive-branch, to the
unconquerable occupant. Each of the twenty-one defendants
also had his ‘ invention * and speech, including Sir Thomas
Perrot and Anthony Cooke, ‘ both in like armour, beset with
apples and fruit, the one signifying Adam, the other Eve,
who had hair hung all down her helmet ’. In the midst of
the first day’s tilting came in Sir Henry Lee as an unknown

^ Nichols, ii. 335, from Segar, * Lodge, ii. 146.

^ Nichols, ii. 334, from Segar ; M. 5. C. i. 181, from Lansd, MS, 99,
f. 259.

* Von Raumer, ii. 431, from a letter of M. Nellot of the French Embassy
in Dupuy MS, xxxiii. I do not feel sure that the writer is really describing
a distinct joust from that of Whitehall, although he certainly locates it at
Hampton Court, and the French commissioners certainly visited Hampton
Court, with Leicester and Pembroke, on 6 May (Walsingham's Journal),
He gives Arundel and Windsor as ch^engers, and the two * Irish youths '
might be Perrot and Cooke. Tilney only charged in the Revels Account
(Feuillerat, 341) for one challenge and two days' triumph.

PAGEANTRY

145

knight, broke his spears, and departed in true romantic
fashion without revealing his identity.^ In 1587, when the
tilting on Queen’s Day was ‘ not so full of devises and so
riche as I have seene ’, is a mention of books given ‘ for
a token * to the spectators ^ ; and to 1590 belongs such a book
in the extant Polyhymnia of George Peele.® This was a notable
occasion, for upon it Sir Henry Lee, now past his youth,
resigned the post of challenger to the Earl of Cumberland.
Peele describes the imprese of the tilters. But the principal
device took place after the courses had been run. A Temple
of Vesta rose out of the earth, and at its door Lee’s emblem
of the crowned pillar. An appropriate song was sung, the
well-known

* My golden locks time hath to silver turned,’

and the Vestal Virgins presented the Queen with a veil and
cloak and safeguard ; after which Lee doffed his armour,
put it on Cumberland as his successor, and himself assumed,
as a sign of his retirement, a side coat of black velvet and
a buttoned cap of the country fashion. He continued, how-
ever, by the royal direction, to attend the annual Queen’s
day, as a kind of Master of the Ceremonies. Cumberland,
who took the name of the Knight of Pendragon Castle,
probably remained knight of the crown until the end of the
reign, but may have been rather overshadowed by the reputa-
tion, both as a courtier and a tilter, of the popular and
magnificent Earl of Essex.^ Robert Carey also claims to have
played a considerable figure in the jousts, and tells us how
in 1593 he appeared and made the Queen a present as ‘ the
forsaken knight that had vowed solitarinesse ’ at a cost of
£400.® To 1595 belongs the device of Eros and Philautia, in
which Essex is believed to have had the assistance of no less
a hand than that of Francis Bacon.® In 1598 it is noted that

* Cf. ch. xxiv.

* Gawdy, 25, sent his father * ij small bookes for a token, the one of
them was gyven me that day that they rann at tilt, divers of them being
gyven to most of the lordes, and gentlemen about the court, and one
especially to the Queue *. On 18 No/. 1595, John Danter entered in S. R.
(Arber, iii. 53) * a new ballad of the honorable order of the Runnynge at
Tilt at Whitehall the 1 7 of November in the 38 year of her Maiesties reign ^
but it does not appear to be extant.

* Cf. ch. xxiii (s.v. Lee).

* Gawdy, 67 (n.d. but ascribed by ed. to 1592), ' Uppon the coronation
day at nyght ther cam two knightes armed vpp into the pryvy chamber
videlicet my L. of Essex and my L. of Cumberland and ther made a chal-
lenge that vppon the xxvjth of ffebruary next that they will runn with
all commers to mayntayn that ther M. is most worthiest and most fayrest
Amadis de Gaule *.

* R. Carey, Memoirs, 32,

2339*1

L

• Cf. ch, xxiii (s.v. Bacon).

THE COURT

146

Queen’s day passed ‘ without any extraordinarie matter more
than running and ringing In 1600 Essex, then under
a cloud, was, contrary to expectation, ‘ no actor in our
triumphs ’, but Cumberland delivered a speech in the capacity
of a Melancholy Knight. In 1602 one Garret came disguised,
like Carey in 1593, and gave the Queen his scutcheon and
impresa} In 1601 there seems to have been a barriers, for
which Sir John Davies was invited by Sir Robert Cecil
through Cumberland to write an introductory speech. ^

James transferred the annual tilting to his own accession
day, and it continued to be regularly observed on 24 March.
Shows ‘ costly and somewhat extraordinary ’ are recorded on
this day in 1605.^ In 1607 the French ambassador comments
that there were ‘ plus de beaux habits que de bons gen-
darmes In 1609 Sir Richard Preston made a sensation ‘ in
a pageant which was an elephant with a castle on his back
James himself was no tilter ; his horsemanship was con-
siderable, but he employed it in the chase rather than in the
onset. It is noteworthy that running at the ring, which was
quite a subsidiary sport at the court of Elizabeth, tends
under her successor to replace the more hazardous jousts.
And even at the ring the marked inferiority of James to his
brother-in-law Christian of Denmark during the latter’s visit
in 1606 became the subject of popular comment, and did not
tend to improve the relations between the sovereigns. The
‘ incomparable pair of brethren ’, William Earl of Pembroke,
and Philip Earl of Montgomery, shone in the tilt-yard ® ;
and it was a fall from his horse at a joust that first attracted
the King’s attention to Robert Carr, afterwards Earl of
Somerset.’ But the most prominent man-at-arms, during the
earlier'years of the reign, was James’s cousin, Ludovic Stuart,
Duke of Lennox. . He led on one side for Truth, against the
Earl of Sussex for Opinion on the other, at a barriers given
to celebrate the wedding of the Earl of Essex on 6 January
1606, and the invaluable Jonson wrote a dialogue of Truth
and Opinion as a setting for the combat.® Later in the same

* Chamberlain, 29, 163 ; Winwood, i. 271, 274.

* Hatfield MSS. xi. 462, 540, 544. ® Winwood, ii. 54.

* Boderie, ii. 144. ® Birch, i. 92.

* Rowland Whyte (Lodge, iii. 162) writing of a * great tilt ' in which
Montgomery was to take part on 20 May 1605, adds the lines —

The Herberts every cockpit day,

Do carry away

The gold and glory of the day.

The Westminster tilt-yard was, of course, close to the Cockpit.

’ A. Wilson (Compleat Hist. ii. 686).

® Cf. ch. xxiii (s.v. Jonson, Hymenaei),

PAGEANTRY

147

year Lennox was at the head of a plan to honour the visit
of King Christian by a challenge to be issued by certain
knights of the Fortunate Island, who fabled themselves to
be inspired by the adventure of the Lucent Pillar, foretold
by Merlin, and declared their intention to joust on behalf of
certain amorous propositions in the valley of Mirefleur. The
original idea was to publish the challenge in the courts of
Europe, but this feature was dropped, somewhat to the relief
of the French ambassador, who had received instructions
from Paris to discourage it, as a coming royal baptism there
would make sufficient demands on shrunken French pockets,
and feats of arms had, moreover, fallen into disuse in France
since the days of Henri 11 . A challenge was in fact pro-
claimed, for England only, in the royal presence and the
public places of Greenwich, on i June. Then the death of
the child-princess Mary supervened, and although there was
a tilt, in which Christian took part, on 5 August, it does not
appear that the romantic setting was used.^ Merlin, however,
was utilized by Jonson, some years later, when Prince Henry,
to whom knightly exercises were as congenial as they were
repugnant to his father, made his first public appearance in
the barriers of 6 January 1610.^ He issued his challenge
under the name of Meliadus, Lord of the Isles, and Jonson’s
device, in which Merlin and the Lady of the Lake hail him
as the awakener of Chivalry from her cave, reflects something
of the enthusiasm with which Englishmen were beginning to
look forward to the future of the high-spirited prince.® There
was a joust on 6 June 1610, after Henry’s creation as Prince
of Wales, although Henry did not himself take part in it.^
He was tilting daily in January 1612, and a challenge by
Lennox, Southampton, Pembroke, and Montgomery is dated

‘ W. Drummond of Hawthomden, Works (1711), 231 ; Boderie, i. 58,
ioS» 136# 173, 185, 260. The challenge of the Knights Errants, who were
the Earls of Lennox, Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery, is sent by
Drummond to a correspondent, with a reply in the same vein, but there is
nothing to suggest that he was the author. Ford’s (q.v.) Honour Trium^
phant (1606) is addressed to the four Earls.

* There are several extant portraits of Henry in tilting armour ; one
i.s engraved in Drayton’s Polyolhion (1613), Dillon {A. J, Hi. 125 ; lx. 132)
notes that he had five suits of tiltmg-armour. One, given him by Lee,
cost £200. Another, given by Prince de Joinville, is in the Tower. A
third, at Windsor, was made by William Pickering at Greenwich, appar-
ently on one of the designs by Jacobe now at South Kensington. As
early as 18 Aug. 1604, when he was ten years old, the Constable of
Castile saw Henry at pike and horse exercise, and gave him a pony
(P. P. X. 178).

® Cf. ch. xxiii (s.v. Jonson, Prince Henry's Barriers).

• Nichols, ii. 361,

THE COURT

148

in this year.^ But the chivalric revival was fated to be dashed
for ever by the untimely death of its princely patron on
the following 6 November. The Accession tilt of 1613 is made
memorable by the fact that the Earl of Rutland had the
signal honour of being furnished with an impresa by the
united genius of Shakespeare and Burbage, whom we must
presume to have been the poet and the painter respectively.®
At Elizabeth’s wedding in 1613 there was ringing only.* One
more device by Jonson, with Cupids and Hymen, introduced
a tilt on I January 1614, after the wedding of the Earl of
Somerset, and my chronicle must end with the Accession tilt
of 1616, for which again Burbage furnished the Earl of Rut*
land with a shield, although the name of Shakespeare, then
probably on his death-bed, does not appear.^

‘ Clephan, 133, 176, from Harl, MSS. 4888, art. 20 ; cf. App. A.

* Rutland MSS. iv. 494, * Item 31 Martii to M'. Shakspeare in gold
about my Lords impreso xliiij*. To Richard Burbadge for paynting
and making y* in gold xliiij* Wotton, ii. 17. mentions the * bare imprese,
whereof some were so dark that their meaning is not yet understood,
unless perchance that were their meaning, not to be understood \

* Nichols, ii. 549.

* Rutland MSS. iv. 508, ' Paid given Richard Burbidg for my lordes
shield and for the embleance, 4^ 18**.

V

THE MASK

[Bibliographical Note. The origins of the mask are treated in my book
on The Mediaeval Stage (1903). ch. xvii, and, with its Tudor and Stuart
developments, in R. Brotanek, Die englischen Maskenspiele (1902), and
P. Reyher, L^s Masques anglais (1909)- An earlier study of merit is
A. Soergel, Die englischen Maskenspiele (1882). R. Bayne contributes
a chapter on Masque and Pastoral (C. H, vi.), and P. Simpson one on
The Masques (SA. England, ii. 31 1). I have not seen W. Scherm, Engltsche
Hofmaskeraden. Useful material, handled with imperfect scholarship,
is in M. Sullivan, Court Masques of James I (1913), and there are disserta-
tions by A. H. Thorndike, The Influence of the Court-Masque on the
Drama, 1608-15 (M. L. A, xv, 114), J. W. Cunliffe, Italian Prototypes of
the Masque and Dumb Show {M. L, A. xxii. 140), W. Y. Durand. A Comedy
on Marriage and some Early Anti-masques (J,G.P. vi. 41 2), and J. A. Lester,
Some Franco-Scottish Influences on the Early English Drama (1909, Haver-
ford Essays), Most of the scanty Elizabethan material is in A. Feuillerat,
Documents relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth
(1908, Materialien, xxi, cited as Feuillerat, Eliz.), and the relation of the
Revels Oflftce to masks is studied in his Le Bureau des Menus-Platsirs et
la Mise en Sc^ne d la Cour d' Elizabeth (1910, cited as Feuillerat, M. P.) ;
cf. also ch. iii. Many of the contemporary descriptions of masks are
edited amongst the works of the poets, and are also to be found, with the
few that are anonymous, in J. Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth (1823), and
Progresses of James J (1828) ; P. Cunningham and J. P. Collier, Inigo
Jones, a Life ; and Five Court Masques {Sh. Soc. 1848) ; and H. A. Evans,
English Masques (1897). A valuable bibliography is W. W. Greg, A List
of Masques, Pageants, &c. {Bibl, Soc. 1902). Analogous French texts
are in P. Lacroix, Ballets et Mascarades de Cour (1868-70), and are studied
in V. Fournel, Les Contemporains de MolUre (1863), li. 173, G. Bapst,
Essai sur VHistoire du TlUdtre (1893), 193, and H. Pnini^res, Le Ballet de
Cour en France (1914).]

The mask is not primarily a drama ; it is an episode in
an indoor revel of dancing. Masked and otherwise disguised
persons come, by convention unexpectedly, into the hall, as
a compliment to the hosts or the principal guests. Often
they bring them gifts ; always they dance before them, and
then invite them to join the dance. They bring torch-bearers
and musicians, who light and accompany the choric evolu-
tions. Their intention lends itself to elaboration by spokes-
men or presenters, and to such spectacular decoration as
a pageant or scene affords ; thus it readily assumes a mimetic
setting. It is necessary to lay stress on the fact that the
guests mingle with the maskers in the dance. This intimacy
between performers and spectators differentiates the mask

150 THE COURT

from the drama to the end ; its goal is the masked ball, not
the opera. And as a corollary to this intimacy, the per-
formers are of the same social standing as the audience ; the
mask is an amateur and not a professional performance.

I have attempted elsewhere to indicate a possible folk
origin for the mask in the visits of excited worshippers, with
fragments of a divine and immolated animal, from house to
house of a village, in order that all may share the direct
contact of the beneficent and potent thing. Those persistent
vizards and torches may perhaps recall, the one the head and
skin of the sacrificed victim, the other the brand snatched
from the sacrificial fire, itself perhaps the survival of a sun-
shine charm even older than the sacrifice.^ Obviously in the
humanist and even sceptical court of Elizabeth any con-
sciousness of the ‘ luck ’ of the mask must have been quite
subliminal. It was a custom, like the rest, belonging of right
to the twelve days of the Christmas rejoicing, but adaptable
readily enough to a wedding or any other occasion of mundane
festivity. As a medium of courtly compliment to a sovereign
it is already well established in the fourteenth century.
When Prince Richard, afterwards Richard II, was keeping
Candlemas at Kennington in 1377, citizens of London, to the
number of 130, rode to visit him with musicians and torch-
bearers. They wore vizards and were dressed to represent
the members of an imperial and a papal court. Entering the
hall, they diced with the prince and his company for jewels,
using loaded dice so as to be sure of losing. After the dicing
the music sounded, and ‘ the prince and the lordes danced
on the one syde and the mummers on the other a great while
and then they dronck and tooke their leaue The whole
proceeding is called * mumming It is to be noted that
the ‘ lucky ’ character of the gifts is emphasized by the
show of dicing, and that the fraternization of maskers and
spectators in the dance is clearly marked. This is important,
because during the changes of the fifteenth century this
particular and primitive element was apparently forgotten.
It was a period of literary and spectacular elaboration. The
dance in disguise attracted to itself other forms of courtly
entertainment that were then in vogue ; the speech and
dialogue of allegorical or mythological personages, the archi-
tectural pageant, the mimic tournament, even the interlude.^
Splendid devices were shown in Westminster Hall before the
sovereigns under their cloths of estate at the wedding of

* Mediaeval Stage, i. 390.

* Ibid. 394 : Reyher, 499 ; from Harl. MS. 247, f. 172^

® Mediaeval Stage, i. 396.

THE MASK

151

Prince Arthur and Katharine of Aragon in 1501.^ On the
first night three great pageants were successively wheeled in.
The first was a castle drawn by four beasts and bearing eight
disguised ladies. The second was a ship with mariners, whose
‘ counteynaunces speaches and demeanor ’ doubtless furnished
an element of comedy. They brought Hope and Love, who
were ambassadors from the third pageant, a Mount of Love,
which bore eight knights. These descended and assaulted
the castle, and finally the ladies yielded and knights and
ladies danced together. On the second night the pageants
represented an arbour and a lanthorn ; on the third two
mountains ; on the fourth, at Richmond, a chapel. Very
similar to these revels of Henry VIPs reign are those described
by the chronicler Halle during the early years of that of
Henry VIII. ^ Many variations are possible. There is not
always a pageant. The comic element may take the form
of a ‘ morris The whole thing may form a setting or after-
piece to an interlude. Occasionally a dicing is introduced,
and to this variety the term ‘ mumming ’ or ‘ mummery ’
appears by the sixteenth century to have been specialized.^
The more generic term is ‘ disguising \ For all its elabora
tion, the early sixteenth-century disguising retained many of
its original features. Vizards and torches are employed. The
disguisers come in suddenly, as a surprise to the guests. But

‘ Leland, Collectanea, v. 359 ; Reyher, 500 ; from Ralph Starkey,
Booke of Certain Trtumphes (Harl. MS. 69, f. 29V) ; Grose and Astle,
The Antiquarian Repertory, li. 249.

2 Halle, i. 15, 21, 22, 25, 40; Brewer, li. 2, 14905^^., from Revels
Accounts (Misc. Bks. Exch., T. of R. 217).

3 Brotanek, 118 ; Reyher, 14, citing, inter aha, A Manifest Detection
of . Diceplay (Percy Soc. Ixxxvii), 37, ' If it be winter season when
masking is most in use . . . they hire ... a suit of right masking apparel,
and after, invite divers guests to a supper, all such as be then of estimation,
to give them credit by their acquaintance, or such as . . . will be liberal
to hazard some thing in a mumchance ; by which means they assure
themselves, at the least, to have supper scot free , perchance to win xx'^
about. And howsoever the common people esteem the thing I am clear
out of doubt, that the more half of your gay masks in London are grounded
upon such cheating crafts, and tend only the pouling and robbing of the
King's subjects '. The dice were loaded otherwise for Richard II. A
* mummery ’, with ' foure visards, foure gownes, a boxe and a drumme
is dramatized in Soltman and Perseda (Boas, Kyd, 189), 11. i, 187, where
for ‘ Charleman is come ' (1. 228), lege * Christemas is come '. It is in
dumb show, which confirms the supposed etymological connexion with
' mum ' (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 396). * Mumchance ‘ is a common term
for dice-play. But the French monton, momerie, and Italian mumia do
not appear to have been specialized in the English sense. * Some goodly
mummery at supper ’ was planned for the meeting of Henry VIII and
Charles V at Gravelines in July 1520 (Rutland Papers, C. S. 54). Jonson
introduces Mumming as a dancer in his Masque of Christmas (1616).

152

THE COURT

unlike the visitors of Richard II in 1377, they do not, so far
as the records show, call upon the guests to take a part in
the dancing. This characteristic feature of the primitive
ceremony seems, under these particular conditions, to have
dropped out. Generally, though not always, there are two
sets of disguised persons, lords and ladies, corresponding to
the ‘ double mask * of later days, and these dance together.
When they go out, the guests very likely dance amongst
themselves, before the ‘ void *, or refreshment of wine and
spices, comes in. But of direct contact between disguisers
and guests, except in the old-fashioned ‘ mummery * with its
dice-play, there is nothing.

This same divorce between performers and spectators seems
to rule in the momeries and entremets^ which correspond to
the English disguisings in fifteenth-century France and Bur-
gundy, and in many of the intermedii and trionfi of fifteenth-
century Italy.^ But somewhere in Italy, possibly in the
carnival masks of Florence, the primitive practice must have
survived ; and from Italy it made its way back again to
France, and also to England, under the rather unjustifiable
colour of a novelty.^ It was on the Twelfth Night of 1512,

* For France, cf. the examples of 1377, 1389, 1393, 1457, <5kc., cited by
Brotanek, 287, Prunidres, 3 ; the verses of Charles d'Orl6ans (> 1415)
for a motnmerte of women (ed. d'H^ricault, i. 148) ; the * danse en barboire,
en laquelle fut danc6 a la mode de France, de I’AUemaugne, d'Espaigne
et Lombardye, et k la fin en la mani^re de Poitou * at the betrothal of
Claude of France and Charles of Austria in 1501 (Jean d’Auton, Chron,
de Louis XII, ii. 99) ; and the revels during the Italian campaigns of Louis
at Pavia and Milan in 1507 (Jean d'Auton, iv. 289, 31 1). At Milan lords
danced * en masque ’ and ladies danced * a relays les unes apres les
autres but it is not definitely said that ladies and maskers danced
together. The * danse en barboire ' possibly illustrates the enigmatical
barbaturiae of which the nuns of St. Radegund in Poitou were guilty in
the eighth century [Mediaeval Stage, i. 362). For Burgundy, cf. Prunidres,
10, citing accounts of the crusaders' Feast of the Pheasant (1454), and
the wedding of Duke Charles and Margaret of York (1468). In 1454
there were dumb shows of the Golden Fleece, followed by tbe entry of
Grkce-Dieu and her train of Virtues, who delivered a speech and then
' commenc^rent k danser en guise de mommeries '. In 1468 there were
‘ entremectz mouvans ’ of the Labours of Hercules (Olivier de la Marche,
ed. Soc, H. F, lii. 134, 143). These shows were given while the guests were
still at table. When they were over, the tables were cleared away, and the
guests danced.

* To the entremeiz of France correspond the intermedii of Italy. These,
€is described by Creizenach, ii. 419; D'Ancona, ii. 168, 420; Symonds,
Shakspeare's Predecessors, 321 ; Renaissance in Italy, v. 122 ; Pruni^res,
28 ; Cunliffe, Early English Classical Tragedies, xxxix, and in M, L. A,
Xxii. 150 and M. P. iv. 597, were entr’actes to late fifteenth and early
sixteenth-century plays, but very similar shows were given independently
at banquets ; e. g. the mimetic chori with Silenus for risus devised by Ber-
gonzio Botta for the wedding of Giangaleazzo Sforza and Isabella of Aragon

THE MASK

153

according to Halle, that ‘ the Kyng with xi other wer dis-
guised, after the maner of Italic, called a maske, a thyng not
seen afore in Englande, thei were appareled in garmentes
long and brode, wrought all with gold, with visers and cappes
of gold, and after the banket doen, these maskers came in,
with sixe gentlemen disguised in silke bearyng staffe torches,
and desired the ladies to daunce, some were content, and
some that knew the fashion of it refused, because it was not
a thyng commonly seen. And after thei daunced and com-
moned together, as the fashion of the maskes is, thei toke
their leave and departed, and so did the Quene, and all the
ladies.’ ^ There has been much dispute as to what the precise
nature of the innovation of 1512 was. I formerly thought
that it lay in the introduction of some Italian detail of
costume, probably the ‘ long gowns and hoods with hats ’
of which the contemporary Revels Account speaks.^ But
after a careful review of the earlier descriptions of disguisings,
I now feel little doubt that those are right who find the
point precisely in that ‘ commoning ’ between maskers and
spectators which remained a characteristic feature of the
mask throughout the days of its most sumptuous develop-
ment, and which the good Halle could hardly be expected
to recognize as merely a reversion to a fourteenth-century
English usage.^ Nor is there any reason to doubt that the
impulse to the new-old mode, and perhaps also the name
which, although in an English form, accompanied it, had
an immediate origin in Italy.^ Ronsard makes a similar
acknowledgement for France : ®

at Tortona in 1489 (Calchi, Nuptiae Mediolaniorum Ducum in Graevius,
Thesaurus, ii. i, 509). Trionfi are primarily out-of-door processions with
cars. ^ Halle, i. 40 ; Brewer, ii. 1497, from Revels Accounts.

* Mediaeval Stage, i. 401 ; cf. Brotanek, 67,

® Evans, xxi ; Reyher, 491 ; Cunliffe in M. L. A. xxii. 140.

* Cf. Marlowe, Edward II, 55 ‘He haue Italian maskes by night *.

* Mask ’ seems to be derived brom a Teutonic root related to Lat. macula,
and means a ' net ' or ‘ stain Both * maske ‘ and ‘ maskel * are M.E.
forms ; but 1 do not hnd the word used in connexion with disguisings,
either for the performance or for the vizard, before 1512. Halle's book
was unfinished at his death in 1 547, and for him * maske ' and its deriva-
tive * masker ' are regular for the performance and the performer. He
also uses a ‘ masker ‘ (i. 215), a * maskery ' (i. 209), * in maskeler ' (i. 209),
'apparel of maskery' (i. 217), and ‘ maskyng apparel' (i. 171, 217;
ii. 220). For the face-mask he retains ' viser The Revels Accounts for
1512-22 use ' maskeller ' or ‘ meskeller * as noun abstract and adjective,
and * maskelyng ' or ' meskellyng ' as adjective or participle. ‘ Masking
garments ', and ‘ a maske ' for the performance first appear in a Revels
document of 1539. In those of Cawarden's time * maske ' and its deriva-
tives are established. Jonson (cf. p. 176) seems responsible for stereo-
typing the spelling ‘ masque which, however, Lyly (cf. Works, ii. 103)
had used before him. ^ Ronsard (ed. Marty-Leveaux), vi. 310.

154

THE COURT

Mascarade et Cartels ont prins leur nourriture,

L'un des Italiens, Tautre des vieux Fran9ois, . . .

. . . L’accord Italien quand il ne veut bastir
Un Theatre pompeux, un cousteux repentir,

La longue Tragedie en Mascarade change.

II en est Tinuenteur ; nous suyuons ses le9ons,

Comme ses vestemens, ses mceurs et ses fa9ons,

Tant Tardeur des Fran9ois aime la chose estrange.

And in fact it is an Italian festivity of 1492 that furnishes
the only clear account of a revel in which disguised persons
took the ordinary guests out to dance that I have yet come
across between 1377 ^ind 1512.^

For some time the mask and the old-fashioned disguising
are traceable side by side at the court of Henry VIII.
Ultimately they amalgamated. By the end of the reign,
‘ mask * has become the official name, and ‘ disguising * is
obsolete.^ The ‘ communing ’ between maskers and guests
is firmly established. And the mask has taken to itself the
elaborations of the disguisings, the introductory speeches,
the pageant, the mimic fight, the double sets of dancers, the
close association with the interlude.^ Or, more strictly
speaking, it can be either simple or elaborate, a mere masked

* This is at the end of a farsa by Jacopo Sannazaro given before Alfonso
Duke of Calabria in 1492 (D'Ancona, 11. 98, from Opere of 1723). ‘ Subito
uscirono li trombetti sonando, tutti vestiti riccamente d'una maniera,
rillustnssimo signore Principe di Capua con gli altri in mumia, delicatamente
vestiti ad una maniera del Signore di Castiglia . . . con torcie in mano
ballando. Da poi, ciascuno prese una Signora per la mano, e balld la sua
alta e bassa ; e con le torchie in mano se ne tornorono : e per quella sera
cosi ebbe fine la festa.' In a revel at Ferrara in 1473 (Muratori, Rer. Ital.
Script, xxiv. 244), Duke Hercules and his fellows danced with the ladies,
and then came in ‘ grande multitudini di mascare ', and danced ; but it
is not clear that the Duke was a masker, or that the masked persons
danced with the ladies. I should add that I have not been able to make
any complete or first-hand investigation of foreign analogies to the mask.
Doubtless the street masks of the Florentine carnival had a folk origin
like that which I assign to the English mumming ; for their elaboration by
Lorenzo de' Medici (1448-92) cf. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, iv. 338 ;
D’ Ancona, i. 253 ; Prunidres, 20. M. Pruni^res appears to regard the
* taking out ' to dance as no part of the original custom, but an adaptation
due to the courts of Ferrara and Modena at the end of the fifteenth century.

* It is significant that John Farlyon in 1534 was appointed Yeoman
of masks, revels, and disguisings ; Cawarden in 1 544 Master of revels and
masks (Tudor Revels, 7, 9; cf. p. 72). In Jonson's Masque of Augurs
(1623) Notch says to the Groom of the Revels, ‘ Disguise was the old
English word for a masque. Sir, before you were an implement belonging
to the Revels '.

^ Halle, i. 57, ii7» i43» I49» I53» J7L I79, 208. 215, 220, 234, 238,
247. 249, 256 ; ii. 24, 79, 87, 108, 149, 183, 220, 303, 360 ; Brewer, ii. 2,
1490 ; hi. 1548 ; iv. 418, 1390, 1415, 1603, from Revels Accounts,

THE MASK

155

dance, or a far-fetched and costly device, as occasion and
economy may demand. As far as I can see, the whole evolu-
tion of the form, as we find it in the seventeenth century, was
already complete under Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn, in 1532,
led the first recorded mask in which women took lords out to
dance.^ Even the fixed scene had made its appearance, as an
alternative to the movable pageant, before the end of the reign. ^

The mask retained its vogue under Edward VI and Mary,
and Elizabeth, with her special love of dancing, was not likely
to neglect it.^ The annals of her court, indeed, have left us
few such detailed descriptions of masks as Halle affords for
that of Henry VIII and the mask-writers themselves for that
of James I. This may be an accident, or it may be that
either economy or taste led Elizabeth to a preference for the
mask simple over the mask spectacular, which most invites
description. The story of the Elizabethan mask has to be
pieced together from the account-books of the Revels Office,
or, where these fail, from scattered sources. But though we
would gladly have more detail, especially on the literary and
dramatic side, the result of such a survey is sufficient to show
that this particular type of mimesis contributed at least as
much to the Christmas entertainment of Gloriana as to that
of either her father or her successor.

The first mask of the reign was on Twelfth Night, 1559.
Some of its details recall, across a space of two centuries,
those of the Kennington ‘ mumming ’ of 1377. In both cases
the performers represented ecclesiastical personages, and in
both there was the somewhat exceptional feature of a parade
in the streets. Naturally the Elizabethan show, with its
crows, asses, and wolves dressed as cardinals, bishops, and
abbots, made a characteristic sixteenth-century appeal to the
sympathies of a reviving Protestantism.'^ But even in 1377

» Halle, ii. 220.

^ The descriptions of the devices employed in the ‘ great chamber
of disguisings ’ at Greenwich in 1527 (Halle, li. 86, 108) suggest that they
were fixed. The setting for one of the masks was certainly revealed * by
lettyng doune of a courtaine not by wheeling in a pageant.

® The available material for 1547-58 is collected, mainly from the
Revels documents in the Loseley MSS., by A. Feuillerat in Materialien, xliv.

* II Schifanoya to Castellan of Mantua (V. P. vii. ii), * As I suppose
your Lordship will have heard of the farsa performed in the presence of
her Majesty on the day of tjie Epiphany, and I not having sufficient
intellect to interpret it, nor yet the mummery performed after supper on
the same day, of crows in the habits of Cardinals, of asses habited as
Bishops, and of wolves representing Abbots, I will consign it to silence . . .
Nor will 1 record the levities and unusual licentiousness practised at the
Court in dances and banquets, nor the masquerade of friars in the streets
of London.'

THE COURT

156

the satirical element had not been lacking, for after emperor
and pope came riding at the end of the procession * 8 or 10
arayed and with black vizerdes like deuils, nothing amiable,
seeming like legates The 1559 mask appears to have been
on a much larger scale than was customary. There were at
least four cardinals and six priests. There were popes, monks,
summoners, and vergers. And there were friars, in black,
white, yellow, russet, and green, apparently a pair of each
colour. The russet friars wore velvet garments, with sleeves
of yellow velvet and purple satin ‘ partie paned ’ ; the popes
and cardinals rochets of white sarcenet ; the monks kirtles
and cowls of black taffeta with sleeves of purple satin. The
Revels Office was careful to provide hats for the cardinals
and ‘ croger-staves ’ for the bishops. Four other masks
followed during the same winter. Two formed part of the
festivities accompanying the coronation, which took place on
15 January. These were a mask, probably of Conquerors in
white cloth of silver, on 16 January, and a mask, probably
of six Moors, on 22 January. The Moors had apparel of
cloth of gold and blue velvet, with sleeves of silver sarcenet
and * bases * of red satin. On their heads was curled hair
made of black lawn and wreathed with red gold sarcenet and
silver lawn. Their limbs and faces were of black velvet,
and of these it is recorded that ‘ the lords that masked toke
awey parte ’. They carried, darts of ‘ tree and paste paper
gilded ’, and as the Revels Office also prepared bells and
staves, it is probable that a morris was introduced. The
torch-bearers to this mask were eight Moorish friars, with
head-pieces of crimson satin. The remaining two masks were
at Shrovetide. On the Sunday was a double mask, with an
assault in it. The Queen’s maids were rifled and rescued
again.^ One party consisted of eight Swart Rutters, in black
and white jerkins and long breeches, with laced hats, dags,
and silvered and gilded partisans ; the other probably of six
Hungarians in blue and purple cloth of gold. The torch-
bearers were six Almayns, and the music a drum and fife.
On the Tuesday was another double mask, but of women,
being six Fisher Wives and eight Market Wives, dressed in
bodies and kirtles of various cloths of gold and silver, with
elaborate trimmings, and wearing wicker head-pieces painted
with red and silver, and hats covered with gold lawn. They

* II Schifanoya to Mantuan Ambassador at Brussels (V,P. vii. 27),

* Last evening at the Court a double mummery was played : one set of
mummers rifled the Queen's ladies, and the other set, with wooden swords
and bucklers, recovered the spoil. Then at the dance the Queen performed
her part, the Duke of Norfolk being her partner, in superb array.'

THE MASK 157

seem to have had Fishermen for torch-bearers, and six
minstrels in yellow damask, as well as a drum and fife.

Four masks were given during the summer of 1559. One
was on 24 May in a banqueting house built at Westminster,
for the entertainment of the Duke of Montmorency, Con-
stable of France, who came to ratify a treaty. This was of
Astronomers, in long robes of Turkey red cloth of gold, with
torch-bearers in green damask. The second was in a ban-
queting house at Greenwich on ii July, after a tilt by the
Queen’s pensioners. The other two were in August during
the progress. One was given by the Earl of Arundel at
Nonsuch on 6 August.^ The other was in a specially built
banqueting house at Lord Admiral Clinton’s place of West
Horsley. This last was a double mask of Shipmen, appro-
priate to an Admiral, in blue cloth of gold, and Country
Maids. Two ‘ grasyers or gentillmen of the cuntrye ’, whose
black damask gowns appear in a Revels inventory, may have
acted as presenters.

The winter masks of 1559-60 were five in number. On
New Year’s day was a mask of six Barbarians, in red cloth
of gold, with Venetian commoners in white damask for torch-
bearers. On Twelfth Night was a double mask, of six Venetian
Patriarchs in green, with purple head-pieces, and six Italian
Women in white and crimson. They were accompanied by
torch-beare(;s and a drum and fife. On Shrove Tuesday was
another double mask, of an elaborate mythological character,
for which a device of ‘ a rocke of founteyne ’ was employed.
The women represented Diana in purple and three pairs of
Huntress Nymphs, in carnation, purple, and blue respectively ;
the men Actaeon and his six fellows, in purple, with orange
buskins and gilt boar-spears. They had a drum and fife and,
as torch-bearers, eight Maidens in purple with variously
coloured kirtles, and eight Hunters in yellow with murrey
buskins. And they were accompanied by twelve hounds. It
is noted in the Revels inventory that Actaeon’s garments
were * all to cutt in small panes and steyned with blood ’.
There were also a mask on New Year’s Eve and a second
mask at Shrovetide.* One of these was of six Nusquams,
allegorical personages in white, crimson, and yellow, having
the breasts of their scapulars ‘ steyned with the posy of poco
a poco *. Their torch-bearers were six Turkish commoners
in murrey and white. The other was of eight Clowns in red

^ Machyn, 204. 206.

* On 31 Jan. (Machyn» 221) * ther was a play a-for her grace, the wyche
the plaers plad shuche matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off,
and contenent the maske cam in dansyng '

158

THE COURT

and green, with flails and spades of gilt wood, black high-
laced shoes made out of the limbs of the previous year’s
Moors, hedging mittens, and white gold sarcenet aprons,
which were ‘ gyven awaye by the maskers in the queenes
presence They had eight Hinds for torch bearers, and
a shepherd for a minstrel.^

* The succession of masks for 1558-60 is traceable with the aid of
II Schifanoya from an analysis of the following Revels documents, (a)
an inventory of 26 March 1555 (Feuillerat, Ed, and M. 180), (b) the accounts
from 26 March 1555 to 29 Sept. 1559 (Feuillerat, Ed. and M. 195-242 ;
Eliz. 79-108), (c) an estimate of the cost of the 1559-60 masks (Feuillerat,
Eliz. 1 10), (d) a * rere-account ’ of the uses to which the masks inventoried
in (a) and certain stuffs subsequently issued to the Masters of the Revels
had been put during 1555-60 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 18), and {e) an inventory
of c. May 1560 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 37). There were fifteen sets of masking
garments in store in 1555, Mariners, Venetian Senators, Turkish Magis>
trates, Greek Worthies, Albanian Warriors, Turkish Archers, Irish Kerns,
Galley-Slaves (torch-bearers), Falconers (torch-bearers). Palmers (torch-
bearers), Turkish Commoners (torch-bearers). Huntresses, Venuses,
Nymphs, and Turkish Women. Some of these were no longer serviceable
and l^ame fees ; the rest were gradually pulled to pieces during 155 5-60
and used with fresh material in constructing new sets. As a result the
inventory of 1 560 contains none of the sets of 1555, but seventeen of later
origin. Patriarchs, Actaeons, Hunters (torch-bearers to Actaeons), Nus-
quams, Turkish Commoners (torch-bearers to Nusquams, not the set of
1555), Barbarians, Venetian Commoners (torch-bearers to Barbarians),
Clowns, Hinds (torch-bearers to Clowns), Swart Rutters, Almayns (torch-
bearers to Swart Rutters, although not so described). Moors, Diana and
her Nymphs, Maidens (torch-bearers to Diana), Italian Women, Fishwives,
and Marketwives. The rere-account shows that in the interim between
1555 and 1560 eleven other sets had come into existence and been picked
to pieces again. There were Almayns (not the 1560 set). Palmers (not
the 1555 set). Irishmen (not the 1555 set), Hungarians, Conquerors,
Mariners, or Shipmen (not the 1555 set), Moorish friars (torch-bearers).
Fishermen (torch-bearers). Astronomers, and unnamed torch-bearers to
Astronomers and to Patriarchs. A number of ecclesiastical costumes had
also been made, of which a few were still in store in 1560, and which
evidently belong to the mask described by II Schifanoya. It seems clear
from the Revels Accounts that the only new mask between 1555 and the
end of Mary’s reign was one of Almayns, Pilgrims, and Irishmen on
25 April 1557 (Feuillerat, Edw. and M. 225). This accounts for three of
the twelve interim sets. The other nine and the seventeen in the 1560
inventory must all be Elizabethan. The documents give or indicate
dates for most of them. A process of exclusions obliges us to place the
Conquerors, Moors, and Hungarians in the early part of 1559. Here are
three vacant dates. II Schifanoya tells us that there was a second company
of maskers on Shrove Sunday, besides the Swart Rutters, whom the
accounts assign to that day. The Hungarians would be appropriate
antagonists to the Swart Rutters. There were also two unspecified masks
at the time of the Coronation, one on the next day, 16 Jan., the other
* on the Sondaye seven nighte after the Coronacion ’, which as 15 Jan.
was itself a Sunday, probably means 22 rather than 29 Jan. As part of
the garments of the Moors had previously been used for the Conquerors
(Feuillerat, Ehz. 20), the Moors must have been the later of the two. The

THE MASK

159

The absence of Revels Accounts renders it impossible to
construct a full catalogue of masks between the Shrovetide
of 1560 and the Christmas of 1571 ; but there is every reason
to suppose that they were given yearly, and a number of
scattered notices have survived. Brant6me, who came to
court during October 1561, in the train of the Grand Prior
Francis of Lorraine, describes a mask of Wise and Foolish
Virgins, performed by Elizabeth’s maids of honour, who did
the Frenchmen the courtesy of taking them out to dance.^
There was a mask at Baynard’s Castle when Elizabeth visited
the Earl of Pembroke on 15 January 1562, a ‘ grett maske ’
at Whitehall on 18 January after the performance of Gorboduc
by the Inner Temple, and on i February ‘ the goodlyest
masket that ever was seen which came in procession from
the city to the court.^ During May 1562 elaborate masks
were in preparation for a projected meeting between Elizabeth
and Mary of Scots at Nottingham Castle.® The meeting never
came off, but a scheme for the masks is preserved, and is
sufficiently detailed to show the point which had been reached
in the evolution of the form. It covers the entertainment of
three successive nights. On the first a prison of Extreme
Oblivion, under the keepership of Argus or Circumspection,
is to be made in the hall. A mask of six or eight ladies is
to enter, leading Discord and False Report captive, and pre-
ceded by Pallas riding on a unicorn and Prudentia and
Temperantia on two lions. Pallas is to declare the intention

masks of 1 1 July and 6 August 1559 were probably not given at the royal
cost, as the Revels documents are quite silent about them. My list agrees
in the main with that in Wallace, i. 199, which however has some errors.
There is no evidence for masks on 2 Feb. and 6 Feb. 1559. The list in
Feuillerat, Eliz. xiii, is incomplete.

* Brantome, Hommes illustres et Capitaines fratiQois (ed. Buchon,
i. 312), ' La reyne . . . donna un soir k soupp>er, oil apr^ se fit un ballet
de ses filles, qu'elle avoit ordonn^ et dress6„ repr^sentant les vierges de
rfivangile, desquelles les unes avoient leurs lampes allum6es, et les autres
n'avoient ny huille ny feu, et en demandoient. Ces lampes estoient
d 'argent, fort gentiment faictes et elabour^es ; et les dames estoient tr^-
belles, bien honnestes et bien apprises, qui prindrent nous autres Fran9oi3
pour dancer.'

* Machyn, 275, 276, ‘ The furst day of Feybruary at nyght was the
goodlyest masket cam owt of London that ever was seen, of a C. and d*
f? 150] gorgyously be-sene, and a C. cheynes of gold, and as for trumpettes
and drumes, and as for torchelyghte a ij hundered, and so to the cowrt,
and dyvers goodly men of armes in gylt harnes, and Julyus Sesar played.'
The last word is in a later hand, and according to Wallace, i. 200, is
a nineteenth-century forgery.

* M. S. C. i. 144 ; Collier, i. 178 ; from Lansd. MS. v, f. 126, endorsed
‘ Maij 1562'. A warrant of 10 May 1 562 for the delivery of silks for masks
and revels to the Master of the Revels is in Feuillerat, Eltz. 1 14.

THE COURT

i6o

to the queen in verse ; Discord and False Report are to be
committed to the prison ; and ‘ then the trompettes to blowe,
and thinglishe ladies to take the nobilite of the straunger and
daunce On the second night the structure in the hall is
to be a castle called the Court of Plenty, whereof Ardent
Desire and Perpetuity, serving respectively Prudentia and
Temperantia, are to be porters. The mask proper is again
to consist of six or eight ladies, accompanied by Friendship
on an elephant, drawing Peace in a chariot to dwell in the
castle. Friendship is to speak explanatory verses. ‘ Then
shall springe out of the cowrte of plentie condittes of all
sortes of wynes, duringe which tyme thinglishe lordes shall
maske with the Scottishe ladyes.* The third night’s mask is
to be a double one. Disdain and Prepensed Malice are to
draw in six or eight lady maskers, sitting in an orchard of
golden apples, and to demand on behalf of Pluto the sur-
render either of Discord and False Report, or of Peace.
These are to be followed by six or eight lords, with Discretion
and Valiant Courage or Hercules. Discretion is to offer the
services of Valiant Courage as champion. Prudentia and
Temperantia are to let down tokens of peace from their
castle, a grandgarde and a girdle and sword, which are to be
laid at the feet of the queens. There is to be an assault
between Valiant Courage and Disdain and Prepensed Malice.
‘ After this shall come out of the garden, the vj, or viij, ladies
maskers, with a song, that shalbe made herevppon, as full
of armony, as maye be devised.’ One may note the allegorical
theme, the use both of fixed and of movable pageants, the
persistent episode of the assault at arms, the gifts to the
principal spectators, and the somewhat formal speeches of
the presenters, eked out on the last night with a song, but
not yet broken up into dramatic dialogue. The draft makes
it clear that English and Scots are to mingle in the dance,
but not quite so clear that the invitation is to come from
the maskers, although that was probably the intention.'

There were * gret mummeres and masks * again at Baynard’s
Castle on each of the four days, 17-20 February 1563, devoted
to celebrating the double wedding of Lord Herbert of Cardiff
to Lady Catherine Talbot and of Lord Talbot to Lady Anne
Herbert. But we are not told that Elizabeth was present,
although it is not improbable.^ On 9 June 1564 there was
a device for the entertainment of Artus de Coss 4 , Seigneur

* I strongly suspect that the second night's mask was really intended
to be one of lords, not ladies.

’ Machyn, 300. Machyn, 215, 222, 248, 288, 300, records several masks
in the City during 1 55^3. The diary ends in August i $63.

THE MASK

i6i

de Gonnor, who came as ambassador from France to confirm
the treaty of Troyes. It was of a martial character and
entailed the preparation of a castle and an arbour and three
masks, and a total cost of £87 gs. 6d} A month later, on
5 July, Elizabeth was entertained at the house of Sir Richard
Sackville by maskers in her colours of black and white,
who presented a sonnet in her honour. The host was the
father of Thomas Sackville, afterwards Earl of Dorset, one
of the authors of Gorboduo and of The Mirror for Magis-
trates,’^ During the winter of 1564-5 there were several
masks, apparently given in close relation to the plays of the
same season. One was at Christmas and another, of Hunters
and Muses, on 18 February, while at Shrovetide no less than
four were made ready, although only two, of Filters and of
Satyrs, were actually seen.^ On 16 July 1565 Elizabeth
attended the marriage at Durham Place of Henry, son of
Sir Francis Knollys, to Margaret, daughter of Sir Ambrose

‘ Feuillerat, Eliz, 116, ‘ the of lune repayringe and new makinge
of thre maskes with thare hole furniture and diuers devisses and a castle
ffor ladies and a harboure ffor lords and thre harrolds and iiij trompetours
too bringe in the devise with the men of armes and showen at the courtte
of Richmond before the Quenes Maiestie and the ffrench embassitours, &c.*

* Froude, vii. 199 ; De Silva to Philip (Sp, P. i. 367, 385), * after supper
, . . the Queen came out to the haD, which was lit with many torches,
where the comedy was represented. I should not have understood much
of it, if the Queen had not interpreted, as she told me she would do. They
generally deal with marriage in the comedies . . . The comedy ended, and
then there was a mask of certain gentlemen who entered dressed in black
and white, which the Queen told me were her colours, and after dancing
a while one of them approached and handed the Queen a sonnet in English,
praising her.* A banquet followed, ending at 2 a.m.

* Feuillerat, Eliz. 116, ‘ Cristmas . . . canvas to couer diuers townes
and howsses and other devisses and clowds for a maske and a showe and
a play by the childeme of the chaple. . . . The xviij^^ of Fabruarie . . .
provicions for a play maid by Sir Percivall Hartts sones with a mask of
huntars and diuers devisses and a rocke, or hill for the ix musses to singe
vppone with a vayne of sarsnett dravven vpp and downe before them. . . .
Shroftid . . . foure maskes too of them nott occupied nor sene with thare
hole furniture which be verie fayr and riche of old stuf butt new garnished
with frenge and tassells to seme new * ; cf. De Silva to Philip of the
revel after a tilt on 5 March (Sp. P. 1. 404). It began after supper with
* a comedy in English of which I understo^ just as much as the Queen
told me. The plot was founded on the question of marriage, discussed
between Juno and Diana, Juno advocating marriage and Diana chastity.
Jupiter gave a verdict in favour of matrimony, after many things had
passed on both sides in defence of the respective arguments. The Queen
turned tome and said, “ This is all against me After the comedy there
was a masquerade of Satyrs, or wild gods, who danced with the ladies,
and when this was finished there entered 10 parties of 12 gentlemen each,
the same who fought in the foot tourney, and these, all armed as they
were, danced with the ladies ; a very novel ball, surely.*

2229* X M

i62

THE COURT

Cave ; and the entertainment included two masks.^ Similarly,
at Shrovetide 1566, she was present at the marriage of Henty
Earl of Southampton, to Mary Browne, daughter of Anthony
Lord Montague, and on i July 1566 at that of Thomas
Mildmay to Frances, sister of Thomas Earl of Sussex, and
on each occasion there was a mask with an oration ‘ spoken
and pronounced * by Mr. Pound of Lincoln’s Inn. The July
mask introduced Venus, Diana, Pallas, and Juno.^ We know
that there were four masks during the winter of 1567-8, and
that there were masks during those of 1568-9, 1569-70, and
1570-1, but practically we know no more.-'* For 1571-2,
however, fuller information is available, since with this
winter begins the series of detailed Revels Accounts, which
extends, with occasional interruptions, to 1589. There were
six masks, on unspecified dates. For two of these the cos-
tumes were ‘ translated * from old sets. Four were new made ;
one of yellow cloth of gold, with torch-bearers in red and
yellow changeable taffeta ; one of crimson, purple, and green
cloth of gold, with torch-bearers in red damask ; one of white
and black branched loom-work, with torch-bearers in blue and
yellow changeable taffeta ; and one in murrey satin, with
torch-bearers in changeable taffeta of an unspecified colour.
The maskers were six or eight in number in each case, and
wore vizards, gloves, at a pair, and strange heads. Devices
of canvas were made for some or all of them. One set carried
flowers of silk and gold, and before them went a child dressed
as Mercury, with two special torch-bearers, who made a speech,
and offered the Queen three similar flowers, signifying victory,
peace, and plenty.^ On 15 June 1572 an elaborate mask was
given in honour of another French embassy under the Due
de Montmorency. The theme evidently bore some resem-
blance to the abandoned devices of 1562.® A vizard was made
for Argus and a collar and shackles and curls of black silk
for Discord. There were two pageants, a castle upon which

* Hume, Year after Armada, 283 ; De Silva to Philip {Sp. P. i. 452),
‘ a ball, a tourney, « and two masks ’. These were after supper and ended
at 1.30 a m.

* Pound's speeches are in Rawl. Poet. MS. 108 (Bodl. MS. 14601), £. 24 ;
De Silva to Philip (July 1566, Sp. P. i. 565), ' a masquerade and a long
ball, after which they entered in new disguises for a foot tournament
The chief challenger was Ormond. On Pound's career as a masker and its
strange end, cf. ch. xxiii.

® Feuillerat, Eliz. 119, * the altering and newe makinge of sixe maskes
out of ould stuff with torche bearers thervnto wherof iiijo^ hathe byne
shewene before vs, and two remayne vnshewen ', 124, 125, 126.

* Ibid. 129, 134, 139, 146.

* Fleay, 19; Brotanek, 25. But the resemblances are only partial,
cf. M. S. C. i. 144.

THE MASK

163

Lady Peace was brought in, and a chariot measuring 14 ft.
by 8 ft. with a rock and fountain for Apollo and the nine
Muses. These were probably the dancers. The performance
is called both a ‘ mask * and a ‘ triumph The total cost
was £409 35. 2 d.y exclusive of the value of stuffs supplied by
the Wardrobe, and it is recorded that the chariot was broken
and spoiled. Payments were made to a Mistress Swego,
apparently for head-dressing, and to a ‘ muzisian that towghte
the ladies * ; also to Haunce Eottes for ‘ patternes *, and to
Petrucio, for his ‘ travell and paynes * taken in the prepara-
tions.^ This is doubtless Petrucio Ubaldini, and it may also
be assumed that the ‘ M^ Alphonse who apparently had
the general direction or ‘ apoyntment * of the proceedings,
and wore a pair of cloth-of-gold buskins, was Alfonso Ferra-
bosco, the musician.

This example attests the continuance of the spectacular
clement in the mask. Its literary aspect also finds illustra-
tion during 1572. The scene was again a house of Lord
Montague, who was celebrating the double wedding of his
son and daughter to those of Sir William Dormer. The
dancers w'ere eight kinsmen of the host, dressed as Venetians.
There was a long introductory narrative, spoken by a
boy-actor. The motive of this was suggested by the sup-
posed community of blood between the Montagues of
England and the Montagues of Venice. The actor repre-
sented a boy of the English house, who had been taken
prisoner by the Turks, together with four English soldiers,
who were the torch-bearers. He had been rescued by Italian
Montagues, who were returning with him to Italy, when
a storm drove them on the shores of Kent, and they took
the opportunity to visit their kinsmen in London. After the
mask there was a shorter speech by Master Thomas Browne,
whom the actor drew from the company, and presented to
the maskers to replace him as their ‘ trounchman *, and the
maskers then took their leaves. The author of the verses
was George Gascoigne. They contain no indication that
Elizabeth was present, and therefore she probably was not.
But they furnish a very good example of the way in which
introductory speeches, still stiff and undramatic, were used
to give topical point and meaning to the disguises assumed
by maskers.2 With this Montague mask may be compared
that at the wedding of Henry Unton, represented in one of

^ Feuillerat, Eliz. 153.

* G. Gascoigne, A devise of a Maske for the right honorable Viscount
Mountacute {Works, i. 75, from The Posies of 1575). The date is fixed by
Thomas Giles’s letter.

THE COURT

164

the scenes from his life and death by which his portrait, now
in the National Portrait Gallery, is surrounded. The wedding
party is shown at table in a great chamber, overlooking a
hall below, in which sit six minstrels. At each end of the
hall are steps, and up and down these and over the floor
of the chamber passes the mask procession, a drummer, a
* trounchman * with a paper in his hand, Mercury, Diana,
six Nymphs, and ten Cupids, five white and five black, as
torch-bearers.^

Finally, a curious document of this same year, 1572,
indicates the widespread popularity which the mask had
acquired, as a form of social entertainment. It is preserved
amongst Lord Burghley’s papers, and is a complaint by one
Thomas Giles against the Yeoman of the Revels, who had the
custody of the Queen’s masks, and made a practice of letting
them out on hire to persons of all degrees, noble and mean,
both in the city and in the country. ^ Thomas Giles was
a haberdasher, and from time to time supplied goods to the
Revels. He bases his complaint mainly on the damage done
to the royal property, but at the end he allows it to appear
that he himself made a business of letting out masking apparel
for hire, and found his prices undercut by those of the Yeo-
man. He appends a list of a score of occasions during the
past year on which loans had taken place. The garments
lent appear to have been mostly those made for the Court
festivities of the previous winter. One set is described as
‘ the coper clothe of golde gownes which was last made ’.
This must have been the mask of Muses given on 15 June.
It was lent with another mask, ‘ into the centre to the
maryage of the dowter of my lorde Montague ’, at some date
between 15 September and 6 October. This was the occasion
of Gascoigne’s verses just described, although it must have
been the other mask, a mask of men, which those verses
presented.

It may be collected from scattered items of expenditure
that the Court masks of 1572-3 were two in number.^ There

* The reproductions in Strutt, Manners and Customs, iii, pi. xi, and
Withington, 1. 208, omit the wedding table. The pictures must be later
than Sir H. Unton*s death in 1596. Ashmole, Berks, iii. 313, dates his
wedding with Dorothy, daughter of Sir Thomas Wroughton of Broad
Hinton, Wilts, in 1580.

2 Feuillerat, Ehz, 409.

^ Ibid, Ehz. 171-81, ‘gloves for maskers*, ‘the lordes gloves*,
the torcheberers gloves *, ‘ lad ye maskers ’, ‘ women maskers *, ' Haunce
Eottes for painting of pattemes for maskes ', ‘ the masks on New Yeres
daye ', * the dubble mask *, ‘ a keye for Janus ', ‘ ffyn white lam to make
snoballs ’, ‘ spunges for snoballs *, ‘ musk kumfettes . . . corianders . . .
clove cumfettes . . . synamon kumfettes . . . rose water . . . spike water . . .

THE MASK

165

was a mask of Janus on i January, with a snow-storm of
comfits and a presentation of snowballs, made out of sponges
covered with fine lamb’s-wool, to the Queen. And on some
later date there was a double mask of men and women,
representing Fishermen and probably Fruit-women. Haunce
Eottes is again said to have painted ‘ patternes ’ for the
masks. There are some traces of a mask, with women, as
well as Mariners and Turks, in it, when Elizabeth received
the French ambassador Mareschal de Retz at Canterbury
during the progress of 1573 ; and there was one at Greenwich,
probably not at the royal expense, for the marriage of William
Drury in the following November or December.^ For the
winter of 1573-4 a complete list is preserved.^ There was
a mask of Lance Knights in blue satin, with torch-bearers
in black and yellow taffeta, on 27 December ; a mask of
Foresters in green satin and cloaks of crimson sarcenet, with
Wild Men in moss and ivy as torch-bearers, on New Year’s
Day ; and a mask of Sages in ‘ counterfeit ’ cloth of gold,
with torch-bearers in red damask, on Twelfth Night. There
were six maskers in each case. The Foresters were equipped
with a hollow tree and with comfits made to resemble wild
fruits ; also with horns garnished with silver, ‘ which homes *,
says the Revels account, ‘ the maskers detayned and yet
doeth kepe them against the will of all the officers At
Candlemas Haunce Eottes made designs for a mask of six
ladies in green satin and gold sarcenet, representing Virtues,
and carrying lights and ‘properties’, including a silk tree,
in specially made candlesticks. Perfumes were prepared to
burn at the end of matches, and speeches for delivery to Her
Majesty written in fair text. But after all the mask was not
shown ‘ for the tediusnesse of the playe that night ’. Finally
there were two masks on Shrove Tuesday. One was of seven
Warriors, with a shipmaster to utter a speech, and six torch-
bearers ; the other of seven ladies, also with a ‘ tronchwoman ’,
and torch-bearers. Probably this was a double mask, and
in some way there came into it nine children, who had been
drilled and taught their speeches by one Nicholas Newdigate,
and in various ways gave a good deal of trouble.® During

gynger cumfettes ... all whiche served for fiflakes of yse and hayle stones
in the maske of Tanvs the roze water sweetened the balls made for snow-
balles presented to her Maiestie by lanvs *, * a nett for the ffishers maskers
‘ berdes for fyshers vj ’/ curled heare for fyshers capps * roches counterfet
. . . whitings . . . thomebackes . . . smeltes . . . mackerells . . . filownders
‘ wooll to stuf the fishes', * banketting fnites * basketes of ffrute',

' mowldes to cast the fnites and ffishes in

* Ibid. 183, 191.

» Cf. p. 87.

2 Ibid. 193-22 1.

i66

THE COURT

the winter of 1574-5 I can only trace with confidence one
mask, on an uncertain date. It was a mask of six Pedlars,
who had little hampers, and looking-glasses with posies
written on them in fine yellow paint.^ There were not
improbably others, the details of which cannot now be dis-
entangled in the Revels Accounts from those relating to plays,
A mask, * for riches of aray, of an incredibl cost was planned
as part of the Kenilworth festivities of July 1575 ; but was
not in the end performed.*^ Nothing is known of the masks
during the winter of 1575-6, for the Revels Accounts are
missing. For Twelfth Night 1577 a * longe * mask was pre-
pared, of six dancers in murrey satin, with torch-bearers in
crimson damask. There were to have been seven speeches
‘ framed correspondent to the daie and Nicholas Newdigate
again trained boys to deliver these. But for some reason the
mask was put off, and given on Shrove Tuesday without any
speeches at all.^ The Revels Accounts of 1577-8 are missing.
A mask by Henry Goldingham was given at Norwich on
21 August 1578 during the progress. It was of Gods and
Goddesses, who entered the privy chamber with a presenter,
torch-bearers, and musicians, marched about the room and
gave characteristic gifts, but apparently did not dance.'* On
II January 1579 there was a double mask for the entertain-
ment of the French ambassador, M. de Simier, who had come
about the Alengori marriage. Patterns of the mask were
submitted for approval to the Lord Chamberlain. One party
consisted of six Amazons, the other of six Knights.^ Each
party had its torch-bearers and a ‘ troocheman who made
a speech to the Queen and delivered her a table with the
speech written upon it. These speeches had been translated
into Italian and inscribed upon the tables by Petruchio
Ubaldini. The Amazons and Knights danced together and
afterwards fought at barriers. Some of the plumes which
had been hired for the Knights were ‘ dropt with torches
and the Revels Office had to pay damages for them. Patterns
were also shown to the Lord Chamberlain of a ‘ Mores ’ mask

‘ Feuillerat, Eliz. 234-46, ‘ vj bandes for hattes for maskers ' gloves
for . . . maskers ‘ 230 Decembris . . . Mirors or lookingglasses for the
pedlers mask xij small at ij® the peece and vj greater at iiij® the peece
‘ 29® Decembris . . . ffayer wryting of pozies for the mask * (fi lanuarii . . .
ix little hampers at xx<* the peeoe for the pedlers mask ' Ifyne yolow
to wryte vpon the mirrors

- Laneham, 33 ; cf. chh. iv, p. 123, and xxiv.

^ Feuillerat, Eliz. 264-70. ^ Cf. ch. xxiv.

* Feuillerat, Eliz. 286, 294 ; Sp. P. ii. 627, 630, ‘ an entertainment in
imitation of a tournament, between sixladies and a like number of gentlemen
who surrendered to them '. Mr. Tresham and Mr. Knowles were Knights.

THE MASK

167

intended for Shrove Tuesday, but this seems to have fallen
through.^ I do not know whether the invention of the Court
poets had failed, or whether for some other reason Elizabeth
had become discontent with masks ; but, although there are
full Revels Accounts for the winters of 1579-80 and 1580-1,
and although plays were numerous, no single performance of
a mask is recorded. But the spirit of revelry awoke in 1581,
at the coming of French commissioners to complete negotia-
tions for the Anjou marriage in the spring, followed by that
of Anjou himself in the autumn. Patterns of masks were
prepared and the construction of a mount begun in March. ^
These were not proceeded with at the time, and the famous
tilt before the Fortress of Perfect Beauty was substituted as
an entertainment for the commissioners. But in the winter
there were two masks, and amongst the devices employed
were a mount with a castle on the top of it, a dragon, an
artificial tree, an artificial lion, and a horse made of wood.^
These details suggest a revival of the scheme abandoned in
the previous spring, for the personal delectation of Anjou.

Court masks are but little in evidence during the next few
years. There was one of ladies, with torch-bearers and eight
boys, on 5 January 1583, and during the same winter one
of Seamen was prepared, but not brought into use.^ There
was a mask in 1583-4, of which no details are given ; while
for 1585-6 and 1586-7 no information, in the absence of the
Revels Accounts, is forthcoming.® The accounts for 1584-5
and 1587-8 have a general reference to masks in their headings,
which may be no more than common form.® In September
1589, however, a mask was prepared to be sent into Scotland,
as a compliment to James VI on the occasion of his wedding
to Anne of Denmark.*^ It does not appear to have been
a very sumptuous affair, and only cost the Revels Office
£iy 105 . 10^. We are not told what the maskers represented.

1 Ibid. 308.

- Ibid. 340, 345, ‘ Aprilis 1581, what monnie is to be allowed
in prest for certayne shewes to be had at Whitehal . . . The Mounte,
Dragon with the fyer workes, Castell with the fallyng sydes, Tree with
shyldes, Hermytage and hermytt. Savages, Enchaunter, Charryott. and
incy dentes to theis cc inarkes ’.

^ Ibid. 344 (table), 346. * Ibid. 349

* Ibid. 3^ (table). The Jervotse MSS. (H. M. C. Various MSS.
iv. 163) contain verses dated 1586 for a mask from Basingstoke to
Richard Pawlett, doubtless a kinsman of the Marquis of Winchester at
Basing.

® Feuillerat, Eliz. 365, 378. A mask followed the play of Caiiline, with
which Lord Burghley was entertained at Gray's Inn on 16 Jan. 1588
(M. S. C. i. 179).

’ Feuillerat, Eliz. 392.

i68

THE COURT

There were six of them, with vizards and falchions, in purple
coats, crimson bases, and orange and purple and ' white
mantles. They had torch-bearers in red and yellow damask,
and four persons garlanded with flowers ‘ to vtter speches
The description of the torch-bearers reads uncommonly like
that of the torch-bearers to the abandoned mask of Seamen,
and if they wore ‘ translated * garments of 1583, there cannot
have been much masking in the interval.

After 1589 the Revels Accounts altogether fail us, and
although it is probable that the mask shared in the general
renewal of festivity which followed the passing of the Spanish
peril, we have only side-lights upon it during the last decade
of the reign. Certainly it was still flourishing in the winter
of 1594-5, when one Arthur Throgmorton planned to use it,
with a rather skilful introduction of some personal abasement
and the gift of a jewel, as a means of recovering the forfeited
favour of the Queen. The occasion seems to have been the
wedding of William Earl of Derby, and Lady Elizabeth Vere,
granddaughter of Burghley, on 26 January 1595.^ It was in
this same winter, too, that a very magnificent Shrovetide
mask was brought to Court by the men of Gray’s Inn, as
a wind-up to their notable Christmas revels under the Prince
of Purpoole. Of this a detailed account is preserved in the
Gesta Grayorutn, with songs and speeches which can be
assigned respectively to Thomas Campion and Francis Davi-
son. These had for theme a controversy between certain
adventurous knights and the sea-god Proteus, and for object

‘ Arthur Throgmorton to Robert Cecil {Hatfield MSS. v. 99 ; cf.
Sh. Homage, 158), ‘ Matter of mirth from a good mind can minister no
matter of malice, both being, as I believe, far from such sourness (and for
myself I will answer for soundness). I am bold to write my determination,
grounded upon grief and true duty to the Queen, thankfulness to my
lord of Derby (whose honourable brother honoured my marriage), and
to assure you 1 bear no spleen to yourself. If I may I mind to come in
a masque, brought in by the nine muses, whose music, I hope, shall so
modify the easy softened mind of her Majesty as both I and mine may
find mercy. The song, the substance I have herewith sent you, m)^elf,
whilst the singing, to lie prostrate at her Majesty’s feet till she says she
will save me. Upon my resurrection the song shall be delivered by one
of the muses, with a ring made for a wedding ring set round with diamonds,
and with a ruby like a heart placed in a coronet, with this inscription
Elizabetha potest. I durst not do this before I had acquainted you here
with, understanding her Majesty had appointed the masquers, which
resolution hath made me the unreadier : yet, if this night I may
know her Majesty's leave and your liking, I hope not to come too late,
though the time 1^ short for such a show and my preparations posted for
such a presence. I desire to come in before the other masque, for I am
sorrowful and solemn, and my stay shall not be long. I rest upon your
resolution, which must be for this business to-night or not at all.'

THE MASK

169

the flattery of Elizabeth, the virtue of whose presence obliges
Proteus to release the knights from their durance in an
Adamantine Rock.^ Of the place of this mask in the history
of the literary form something will be said at a later point.

The gallantry of Gray’s Inn was emulated a few years later
by the Middle Temple, who, after presenting several masks
in their own hall during the Christmas revels of their Prince
d’Amour, did their devoir at Court on Twelfth Night with
a mask in which the nine Passions issued from a Heart. The
mask was followed by a barriers, and preceded by a cavalcade
through the streets of a type of which examples have already
been noted in 1377 and 1559.^ In the summer of 1600 one
of Elizabeth’s maids of honour, Anne, daughter of Elizabeth
Lady Russell, left the Court to be married to Henry Lord
Herbert, son of the Earl of Worcester. The Queen was present
at the wedding on 16 June. She dined at Lady Russell’s
house in Blackfriars, and supped and lodged for the night in
that of Lord Cobham hard by. After supper a mask came
in. Eight Muses, represented by maids of honour and others,
were come to seek their lost companion. After they had done
their performance, they wooed the Queen to dance. She was
not proof against the ready tongue of Mary Fitton, and com-
plied. * Elle dansa gayement et de belle disposition,’ says
the French ambassador, M. de Boississe, who was present.^

‘ Cf. Mediaeval Stage^ i. 417, and ch. xxiv.

* Cf. J. A, Manning, Memoirs of Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, 9, and Mediaeval
Stage, i. 416, where, however, the date suggested is the Christmas of 1599-
1600. But the Court was not in London that winter, and the indications
of days of the week agree with 1 597-8. The manuscnpt descnption written
by Rudyerd is dated ‘ anno ab aula condita 27 The Middle Temple hall
was built in 1572. The masks in this hall were on 31 Dec. and 7 and 2 1 Jan
The maskers were accompanied to Court on 6 Jan. by nine torch-bearers
carrying devices, eleven knights, eleven squires, and a hundred other
torches, as well as trumpeters and heralds. ' Sur Martino no doubt
Richard Martin, the Pnnee d’Amour, was their leader. Doubtless they
took out ladies, as Mrs. Nevill, afterwards a maid of honour, is said to
have * txirne the bell away * in the revels.

* Boississe, i. 415. He says that some gentlemen masked with the
filles, of which there is no trace in the other accounts. Letters from Lady
Russell about the wedding are in Cecil Papers, x. 121, 175, and it is also
referred to by Chamberlain, 79, 83. * I doubt not but you have heard of
the great manage at the Lady Russell’s . . . and of the maske of eight
maides of honour and other gentlewomen in name of the muses that came
to seeke one of theire fellowes and by Rowland Whyte (Sydney Papers,
ii. 195, 197, 201, 203), ‘ M“ Fitton led, and , after they had done all their
own ceremonies, these eight Ladies Maskers chose eight Ladies more to
dance the measures M'» Fitton went to the Queen, and wooed her to
dance ; her Majesty asked what she was. “ Affection,” she said. ” Affec-
tion I ” said the Queen, ” Affection is false.” Yet her Majesty rose and
danced.* A picture of the Marcus Gheeraerts school (cf. L. Cust in Trans.

THE COURT

170

Finally, in the spring of 1602, negotiations were passing
between Sir Robert Cecil and Sir John Popham on behalf of
the Middle Temple, for some entertainment to gratify the
Queen, for which the benchers were prepared to contribute
200 marks.^ Probably this was a mask, but whether and
when it actually came off is not known. It may have been
designed to celebrate the coming of the Duke of Nevers and
other Frenchmen in the following April, and it may have
been the mask a song from which was copied by John
Manningham, a member of the Middle Temple, on a fly-leaf
of his diary with the date ‘ Nov. 2

Under James I the material for tracing the history of the
mask becomes remarkably abundant, owing to the regular
practice, of which the Gesta Grayorum is the only Elizabethan
example, of issuing elaborate descriptions, with copies of the
songs and speeches used, for the information of those unable
to be present, and the incidental glorification of performers,
poets, and producers.^ In view of the full details compiled
from these descriptions and other sources in the bibliographical
appendix, a brief chronicle will suffice for a conclusion of this
chapter. The main factors to be borne in mind are, firstly,
the personal participation of Queen Anne, who took a special
delight in all kinds of spectacle and revelry ; ^ secondly, the

Walpole Soc. in. 22) probably representing Elizabeth’s passage through
Blackfriars on this occasion is extant in two versions at Melbury and
Sherborne, and has often been reproduced ; e. g. in Shakespeare's England,

i f P

* Popham to Cecil, 8 Feb. 1602 (Hatfield MSS. xii. 47), * I have so dealt
with some of the Benchers of the Middle Temple as I have brought that
the House will be willing to bear 200 marks towards the charge of what
is wished to be done, to her Majesty’s good liking, and if the young gentle-
men will be drawn in to perform what is of their part, I hope it will be
effected. Some of the young men have their humors, but I hope that
will be over-ruled, for I send for them as soon as other business of her
Majesty is dispatched. But the Ancients of the House, who wish all to
be done to her Majesty's best content, depend upon your favour if anything
through young men’s error should not have that carriage in the course
of it, as they would wish it might not yet be imputed unto them.’ There
is no reference to any mask in the records of the Middle Temple, which
in 1601-2 kept a ‘ solemn * but not a * grand ' Christmas.

* Manningham, i, ‘ Song to the Queene at the Maske at Court, Nov. 2 ’.
The Song begins, ' Mighty Princes of a fruitfull land ’. The November of
1602 is the only one covered by the period of the diary ; but Elizabeth
was then at Richmond, rather out of reach of a lawyers' mask.

* An Italian model for such printed descriptions may be found in that
of G. Cecchi’s Florentine Esaltazione della Croce (1589) ; cf. A. D’ Ancona,
Sucre Rappresentaztoni, iii. i, 235 ; S3anonds, Renaissance in Italy, iv. 282.

* J. A. Lester, Some FrancO’ScoUish Influences on the Early English
Drama (Haverford Essays, 1909), 145, notes the vogue of the mask at
Holy rood under Mary Stuart and the pompae wntten for such occasions

THE MASK

171

employment of such poets as Jonson, Campion, Daniel, Beau-
mont, and Chapman, to give the masks their literary setting ; ^
and thirdly, the great development of the scenic element
through the mechanical and decorative genius of Inigo Jones.
Anne gave her first mask, of which no details are preserved,
as a welcome to Prince Henry, when he came to join the
Court at Winchester during the plague-stricken wanderings
which filled the autumn of 1603. An English official describes
it as ‘a gallant mask and the French ambassador, more
critically, as less a ‘ ballet * than a ‘ tnasqtcarade champkre \
At any rate it whetted the appetite of the Court for more
to come, and there was soon talk of the splendours fore-
shadowed for the following Christmas.- This, still owing to
the plague, was held at Hampton Court. The principal mask
was danced by the Queen, with Lady Bedford and other
ladies of the court, on 8 January. Through the influence of
Lady Bedford, Samuel Daniel was employed as poet, and
produced his Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. Queen Eliza-
beth’s wardrobe was ransacked to provide material for the
costumes. The lords of the Court, led by the Duke of Lennox,
danced a mask of Indian and Chinese knights on i January,
and certain Scotchmen one resembling a sword dance on
Twelfth Night ; but of neither of these has a full description
been preserved. The masks of subsequent Christmases took
place at Whitehall, where in 1607 the old timber banqueting
house of 1581 gave way to a permanent structure designed
to house them with magnificence. The Queen’s mask of
1604-5 was the Mask of Blackness^ and began the long and
fruitful' co-operation of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones. It was
on Twelfth Night, and did honour to the creation of Prince
Charles as Duke of York. A mask of Juno and Hymenaeus

by Buchanan He asserts that Anne acquired the taste for masks during
her thirteen years' residence in Scotland, but in fact he cites no example of
a mask proper during 1590-1603, and only one, in 1581, during the reign
of James. There were other forms of mimetic revelry. The pageants
introduced by Bastien Pagez into a banquet at the baptism of James
in 1566 and accompanied with verses by Buchanan are analogous to those
at the baptism of Henry Frederick in 1594 {Somers Tracts, li. 179).

^ Jonson told Drummond in 1619 (Conversatwns, 4), ‘ That next himself,
only Fletcher and Chapman could make a mask No independent mask
by Fletcher is known, and that in The Matd*s Tragedy is probably Beau-
mont’s. Fletcher may have written the Triumph of Time in Four Plays
or Morall Representations, which is practically a mask.

Lodge, lii. 58 ; Beaumont to Villeroy (27 Oct. 1603) in King's MS. 124,
f. 175, ‘ File fit jl y' a quelques jourz vn ballet ou pour mieux dire vne
masquarade champdtre. Car il n'y avoit ni ordre ni depense. Mais EUe
se propose d'en fane d’autres plus beaux cet hiver en recompense et
semble que le Roy et ses Principaux Ministres, qui sont toujourz en
Jalousie de son Esprit, soient bien aises de le voir occupy en cet exercice.*

172

THE COURT

given on 27 December by friends of Sir Philip Herbert, in
celebration of his marriage to Lady Susan Vere, has not been
preserved. The only Christmas masks of the next two winters
were of similar origin. Jenson’s Hymenaei was given at the
wedding of Robert Earl of Essex and Lady Frances Howard
on 5 January 1606, and a mask of the Knights of Apollo by
Thomas Campion, who had had a share in the verses for the
Gray’s Inn mask of 1595, at that of James Lord Hay and
Honora Denny on 7 January 1607. As a mask must be
accounted, I suppose, the extraordinary exhibition of Solomon
and the Queen of Sheba before James and Christian of Den-
mark at Theobalds in July 1606, of which a description is
forthcoming from the satirical pen of Sir John Harington.^
By the winter of 1607-8 the new banqueting house was ready,
and the series of Queen’s masks was resumed with Jonson’s

‘ Harington, i. 349, * One day, a great feast was held, and, after dinner,
the representation of Solomon his Temple and the coming of the Queen
of Sheba was made, or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made,
before their Majesties, by device of the Earl of Salisbury and others.
But alass ’ as all earthly thinges do fail to poor mortals in enjoyment, so
did prove our presentment hereof. The Lady who did play the Queens
part, did carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties ; but, forgetting
the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish
Majesties lap, and fell at his feet, tho I rather think it was in his face.
Much was the hurry and confusion ; cloths and napkins were at hand,
to make all clean. His Majesty then got up and would dance with the
Queen of Sheba ; but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and
was carried to an inner chamber, and laid on a bed of state ; which was
not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen which had been bestowed
on his garments ; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices,
and other good matters. The entertainment and show went forward,
and most of the presenters went backward, or fell down ; wine did so
occupy their upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope,
Faith, and Charity : Hope did assay to speak, but wine rendered her
endeavours so feeble that she withdrew, and hoped the King would excuse
her brevity : Faith was then all alone, for I am certain she was not joyned
with good works, and left the court in a staggering condition : Charity
came to the King’s feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of sins her
sisters had committed ; in some sorte she made obeysance and brought
giftes, but said she would return home again, as there was no gift which
heaven had not already given his Majesty. She then returned to Hope
and Faith, who were both sick and spewing in the lower hall. Next came
Victory, in bright armour, and presented a rich sword to the King, who
did not accept it, but put it by with his hand ; and, by a strange medley
of versification, did endeavour to make suit to the King. But Victory
did not tryumph long ; for, after much lamentable utterance, she was
led away like a silly captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-
chamber. Now did Peace make entry, and strive to get foremoste to the
King : but I grieve to tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of
her attendants ; and, much contrary to her semblance, most rudely made
war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose
her coming.*

THE MASK

173

^ask of Beauty on 10 January. In a second mask, sometimes
Called, although not by its author, Tht Hue and Cry after
Cupidf for the wedding of John Viscount Haddington and
Lady Elizabeth Radcliffe on 9 February, Jonson appears to
have considered that he took a definite step forward in the
evolution of the mask-form, by the introduction of an anti-
mask or group of grotesque dancers as a foil to the mask
proper. The Queen’s mask for 1608-9 was Jonson’s Mask
of Queens at Candlemas, and there was no other. During the
winter of 1609-10, which was devoted to Prince Henry’s
mimetic barriers, there was no mask at all, unless indeed
the anonymous and undated Mask of the Twelve Months
belongs to this year. But on the following 5 June came
Daniel’s Tethys' Festival^ which was the Queen’s contribution
to the festivities attending the creation of Henry as Prince
of Wales. In 1610-11 there was a Queen’s mask, Jonson’s
Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly ^ on 3 February, and also
a Prince’s mask, Jonson’s Oberon^ on i January. Jonson’s
Love Restored was a Prince’s mask of 6 January 1612. The
masks of 1612-13 were all given in celebration of the wedding
of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine of the
Rhine, Frederick V, at Shrovetide. There were three of
them. Campion’s Lords' Mask was danced by lords and ladies
of the Court on the actual day of the wedding, 14 February.
The other two were contributed by the Inns of Court, and
each was preluded by a public procession or triumph, such
as had been found natural in earlier years when a mask came
from London to the palace. The Middle Temple and Lincoln’s
Inn came by road on 15 February with a mask of Virginians
by George Chapman ; the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn by
water on 16 February, with a mask of Olympian Knights
by Francis Beaumont. This, however, they were not able
to dance until 20 February. Jonson took no part in these
hymeneal festivities, and may have been abroad. The masks
for the wedding of Robert Earl of Somerset and Lady Frances
Howard on 26 December 1613 almost vied in magnificence,
and more than vied in number, with those given for the
princess. The bride had passed through stormy days since
Jonson’s Hymenaei hailed her first marriage in 1606, and was
to pass through stormier still. Campion was again selected
as the poet for the actual wedding day. In his mask, some-
times called the Mask of Squires^ and danced by lords and
gentlemen of the Court, he had the assistance, not of Jones,
but of Constantine de’ Servi, who does not appear to have
been very successful. Jonson’s Irish Mask, which was given
on 29 December and repeated on 3 January, was a com-
paratively slight performance, danced by five Englishmen

m

THE COURT

and five Scots. Thomas Middleton's Mask of Cupid^ unfor-
tunately lost, was an exceptional performance given not at
Court, but by the City in the Merchant Taylors* hall on
4 January, after a request from the King that they should
do honour to the earl. Finally the Mask of Floivers^ the
authors of which are only known by the initials L G., W. D.,
and T. B., was given by Gray’s Inn on 6 January, at the
charges of Sir Francis Bacon, who had already taken an
active part in promoting the joint Inner Temple and Gray’s
Inn mask of the previous year. When Anne married her
favourite maid of honour, Jane Drummond, to Lord Rox-
borough on 2 February, she perhaps thought that another
mask would be something of an anti-climax, and the per-
formance in a little paved court at Somerset House took the
shape of a pastoral, Daniel’s Hymen's Triumph.

After the wedding carnivals of two successive years, the
masks of 1614-15 and 1615-16 were comparatively insigni-
ficant, and even their chronology is not quite certain. To
one of these winters belongs Jonson’s Mercury Vindicated
from the Alchemists^ but it is not certain to which, and to
the other his Golden Age Restored. In each year there were
duplicate performances, on 6 and 8 January 1615 and on
I and 6 January 1616. Both masks were danced by lords
and gentlemen of the Court. That of 1615 was contrived to
serve the interests of George Villiers, who was soon to replace
the already tottering Somerset in the esteem of his royal
master. A mask, of which no details are known, seems also
to have been given by the Spanish ambassador in February
1615. Of masks elsewhere than at Court during 1603-16 there
are few to record. The Princess Elizabeth seems, on at least
one occasion, to have had a mask for her private delectation.^
One by John Marston formed part of the entertainment given
by the Earl of Huntingdon to Alice Countess of Derby, at
Ashby in August 1607, and one by Campion part of that
given by Lord Knollys to Anne at Caversham on 27 April
1613. William Browne’s Ulysses and Circe glorified the Inner
Temple feast on 13 January 1615. The palmy days of the
Jacobean mask close with our period. Henry was dead ;
Elizabeth was gone. Anne, ailing and retired during her
later years, died in 1619. She had danced her last mask in
1611. Charles made his d^but as an adult masker in 1618,
and most of the Court masks to the end of the reign are
Prince’s masks. But it takes a Queen to make a Court, and
the English mask had to wait for its renouveau until the
coming of Henrietta Maria.

* Chamber Accounts (i6io-ir, Apparellings), ‘for making ready the
La: Eliz: Lodginges for a maske *.

VI

THE MASK {continued)

The historical sketch given in the last chapter needs to
be supplemented by some analysis of the stage of develop-
ment which the mask had reached, in relation to its origins,
by the Jacobean period. And first of all, on the side of scenic
effect. Looking back over the reign of Henry VIII, in the
light of what followed, w^e may discover two fairly distinct
types of masks. There is the mask simple, in which the
dancers, with their richly hued and sparkling costumes,
their torch-bearers and their musicians, m^y be regarded as
furnishing their own decoration There is the mask specta-
cular, to which added ^clat is given by the pageant, mobile,
or towards the end of the reign stationary, with its additional
lights, its carvings and mouldings, its gilt and colours, and
the elements of illusion and surprise afforded by its facilities
for the concealed entry of personages. Elizabeth, perhaps as
has been hinted upon grounds of economy, perhaps from
the more legitimate and attractive motive of a special interest
in the dancer’s art, used mainly the mask simple. But the
pageant was not altogether forgotten, and recurs from time
to time amongst the preparations for festivities on some
exceptionally elaborate scale. The most notable example
is perhaps to be found in the devices for the contemplated
meeting with Mary of Scots in 1562, which involved the
construction of a prison, a castle, and an orchard, and of
which even Henry VIII would have had no reason to be
ashamed. We hear also of a rock of fountain for the mask
of Diana and Actaeon in 1560, of a castle and arbour at the
visit of Artus de Coss6 in 1564, of a rock with a veil of sarcenet
for the mask of hunters in 1565, of a chariot and castle for
the visit of the Due de Montmorency in 1572, and of a mount,
a castle, an orange tree, and a house for that of the Due
d’Anjou in 1581. The Gray’s Inn maskers of 1595 had their
Rock Adamantine, and those of the Middle Temple about
1598 sallied forth from a Heart.

I do not know that any special inferences need be drawn
from the fact that on most of these occasions the English
Court was putting its best foot foremost to entertain a visitor
from France, for in fact during the greater part of Elizabeth’s

176

THE MASK

reign France was the only continental country of the first
importance with which she maintained constant diplomatic
relations.^ Nor is enough known of the development of the
French mask in the middle of the sixteenth century to make it
possible to say how far, if at all, that country then gave the
lead to England.^ Bran tome reports how Catherine de
M^dicis would amuse herself by inventing ‘ quelques nouvelles
danses ou quelques beaux ballets, quand il faisoit mauvais
temps and the writings of Clement Marot and Mellin de
Saint- Gelais and of the Pl^iade contain several sets of verses
composed for the purposes of ‘ mommeries ’ and ‘ masca-
rades I should suppose that the distinction drawn by M. de
Beaumont in 1603 between a ‘ mascarade * and a ‘ ballet ’
corresponds pretty closely with that made above between
the mask simple and the mask spectacular. The history of
the ‘ ballet ’ proper in France seems to begin under Italian
influences during the last quarter of the century. Its pioneer
was one Baldassarino da Belgiojoso, a groom of the chamber
to Catherine de M^dicis and to her son Henri III, who came
to France about 1555 and gallicized his name as Baltasar
de Beaujoyeulx. When Henri, not yet King of France, left
Paris to receive the crown of Poland in 1573, Baldassarino
arranged the spectacle for his farewell. Sixteen nymphs
issued from a movable rock, offered gifts, and danced in the
hall. A printed description by Jean Dorat contains engravings
of the rock and the dances, and verses in Latin and French,
to which Ronsard and Amadis de Jamyn contributed.'*
This appears to have been a mask on lines already familiar
in both France and England. But eight years later Baldas-
sarino got an opportunity for a far more elaborate under-
taking. His Balet Comique de la Royne was devised for the
wedding of the Queen’s sister, Mile de Vaudemont, to the
Due de Joyeuse on 15 October 1581.^ His own share seems to
have lain in the invention of the general scheme of the enter-

^ Perhaps Jonson’s persistent use of ‘ masque ’ for the older ‘ mask '
confesses a sense of derivation in his mind.

* The data are collected by Pruni^res, 34.

^ Brantome (ed. Soc. H. F.), vii. 346 ; Pruni^res, 48 sqq. ; Brotanek, 291.

* Magmficenhssitni spectacuh . . . tn Henrtci Regis Poloniae . . . grcUula^
tionem Descriptxo lo Aurato Poeta Regio Autore (1573) ; cf. Lacroix, i. xxi,
and the engraving reproduced by Pruni^res as pi. 2. Pruni^res, 70, thinks
that Baltasar had already taken part in the ' mascarade half-tilt, half-
dance, at the wedding of Henri of Navarre in 1572.

® Balet comique de la Royne fatet aux Nopces de Monsieur le Due de
Joyeuse et de Mademoyselle de Vaudemont, sa Soeur, par Baltasar de Beau-'
joyeulx. Valet de Chambre du Roy et de la Royne, sa Mere (1582). This is
reprinted, but without the engravings, by Lacroix, i. i ; cf. Prunidres, 75,
who gives one of the engravings as his pi. 3.

THE MASK

177

tainment and in the dances ; he had the assistance of M. de la
Chesnaye for the verses, Lambert de Beaulieu for the music,
and Jacques Patin for the painting. The Queen herself led
the dancers. There was an intricate combination of chore-
graphy and mythological setting. The maskers proper were
twelve Naiads in white and four Dryads in green ; the
presenters Circe, a Fugitive from her garden, Glaucus, Thetis,
Mercury, Pan, Minerva, Jupiter; the musicians mermaids,
tritons, satyrs, virtues, and others ; the torch-bearers twelve
pages. At the top of the hall was a dais for the royal seats,
and to the right and left in front places for ambassadors.
Behind, and also lower down the hall, were tiers of seats,
and above them two galleries ; in all 9,000 or 10,000 spectators
were present. On the left of the hall was a Gilded Vault for
musicians, on the right the Grove of Pan, and at the foot the
Garden of Circe, both veiled by curtains. In the roof, between
the Vault and the Grove, hung a cloud. On each side of the
Garden, trellises covered the entrance. After a preliminary
episode between Circe and the Fugitive, the Naiads appeared
oh a movable fountain, and danced twelve geometrical
figures as the * premifere entr6e du ballet \ They were then
enchanted by Circe, and taken to her garden, with Mercury,
who dropped from the cloud in a vain attempt at rescue.
After two ‘ intermfedes * of music and song, during which the
Dryads entered and the Grove of Pan was disclosed, came
Minerva on a chariot, and called Jupiter from the cloud and
Pan from the Grove for an assault on the Garden. Circe was
captured, and her wand presented to the King. Then the
Naiads and Dryads danced fifteen ‘ passages ’ as the ‘ entree
du grand ballet and forty more of a geometrical character
for the ‘ grand ballet ’ itself. Finally, they presented the
King and gentlemen with ‘ choses de mer * and appropriate
‘ devises * or mottoes, and took them out for ‘ le grand bal ’
followed by ‘ bransles ’ and other dances.

So far as published documents go, the Balet Contique
is closely the prototype of the fully developed ‘ ballet ’ or
court mask, as we find it both in France and in England.^
The Gray’s Inn mask of 1595, with its printed description
and its theme of enchantment, confesses an influence ; and

* Prunidres, 94 sqq, Lacroix, i. 89, 109, 237, 271, 305, prints four
French masks which allow of a useful comparison with those of England,
viz. Ballet des Chevaliers Frangois et Biarnois (1592), Balletz representez
devant le Roy (1593), Ballet de Monseigneur le Due de Vandosme (1610) ;
Ballet du Courtisan et des M air ones (1612) ; also a description of Le Grand
Bal de la Reine Marguerite (1612), which shows the relation of the mask
to the contemporary non-mimetic state ball. On French masks of 1605,
1609. 16x2, and 1615, cl. Sullivan, 29. 52, 67, 99.

aas9*x N

THE COURT

178

there were only two directions in which the devisers of
Henri IV and of James I were able to make any notable
advance upon Baldassarino’s model. One of these was the
introduction of the antimask, to which it will be necessary
to return ; the other was the concentration of the scenic
setting. The setting of the Balet Comique is not concentrated
but dispersed. It is not even all stationary. The interest of
the spectators is not merely divided amongst the Garden of
Circe at the foot of the hall, the Grove of Pan on the right,
the musicians* vault on the left, and the cloud overhead.
It is claimed at certain points by the movable fountain upon
which the maskers enter and the chariot of Minerva. This
dispersed setting recurs in the first of Queen Anne’s great
masks, Daniel’s Vision of the Twelve Goddesses^ in 1604.
A mountain stood at the lower end of the hall in Hampton
Court, and at the upper end a Cave of Sleep on one side and
a Temple of Peace on the other. A contemporary observer
notes an inconvenience of this arrangement. ‘ The Halle was
so much lessened by the workes that were in it ’, writes
Dudley Carleton, ‘ so as none could be admitted but men of
apparance.’ This difficulty proved fatal to the dispersed
setting, and in all later Jacobean masks the setting was
concentrated in a scene erected at the lower end of the hall,
and ample space was thus left both for the evolutions of the
dancers and for the seating of the spectators.^

This change at least synchronizes with the emergence of
Inigo Jones and the beginning of the architectural domina-
tion which for nearly half a century he was destined to exercise
over the mask. His is the first outstanding name which we
can associate with the history of English scenic decoration.
Under Elizabeth and her predecessors the apparel and
pageantry of a mask were the care of the Revels officers,
and they naturally called in such painters and other men of
taste about the court as were likely to prove useful. These
were often foreigners. Alfonso Ferrabosco, the musician,
seems to have had the general oversight of an important
mask in 1572, and amongst his collaborators was another
Italian, Petruccio Ubaldini, while Hans Eottes drew the
patterns. Eottes was similarly employed in 1573 and 1574,
and Ubaldini was called upon again in 1579 write out the
speeches of a mask in his native Italian.^ The responsibilities

‘ Exceptionally, the main scene was supplemented by a throne ‘ in
midst of the hall ' in the Mask of Beauty and by a mount and tree at the
upper end of the hall in Tethys' FesHval.

* On Hans Eottes, or E worth, first traceable as Jon Eeuwowts of
Antwerp in 1 540, and the considerable body of portrait work now ascribed

THE MASK

179

of Inigo Jones were much wider than those of any of these
predecessors. His singular name has an Italian ring, but
he was born of London parentage in 1573 and is said to have
been apprenticed to a joiner.^ Through the generosity of
the third Earl of Pembroke he had opportunities of travel,
and spent much of his early life in Italy and in the service of
Christian IV of Denmark. He seems to have been back in
England by 28 June 1603, when the accounts of the Earl of
Rutland record a payment of £10 to ‘ Henygo Jones, a picture
maker ’. He is not known to have taken part in the masks
of the following winter, but Jonson acknowledges that ‘ the
bodily part ’ of the Mask of Blackness on 6 January 1605
was his ‘ design and act and in August of the same year
he took charge of the plays given before James in the hall of
Christ Church, Oxford, and contrived their changes of scene
with the aid of revolving triangular screens of Italian design.
His place as an architect of court masks was now assured,
and even the poets, to whom the descriptions of the perform-
ances naturally fell, found it impossible to conceal the fact
that his functions were at least as important as their own.
Jonson in his earlier descriptions is punctilious in rendering
due credit to his colleague.^ So too are Daniel and Campion.®

to him, cf. L. Cust, The Painief p. (Annual of Walpole Soc. li i ; hi. 113)
On Ferrabosco and Ubaldini, ch. xiv (Italians).

‘ For the career of Jones, cf. D N. B , Reyher, 75 , R. Blomfield in
Portfolio (1889), 88, 113, 126; and Renaissance Architecture in England,
i. 97 ; H. P. Horne, An Essay on the Life of Imgo Jones, Architect m The
Hobby Horse (1893), 22, 64 ; P. Cunningham, Inigo Jones (1848). Designs
by Jones for the scenery, stage-machinery, and dresses of masks and other
court entertainments are in Lansdotvne MS. 1171, and in the collections
of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth and of the Royal Institute of
British Architects. They are mostly of the Caroline rather than the
Jacobean period A few have been reproduced by Cunningham, Reyher,
and Lawrence, li. 97. P Simpson (Sh. England, 11. 31 1) gives eight
figures for the Mask of Queens.

* * The design and act of all which, together with the device of their
habits, belong properly to the merit and reputation of Master Inigo Jones,
whom I take modest occasion in this fit place to remember, lest his own
worth might accuse me of an ignorant neglect from my silence ’ (Hymenaei) ;
‘ The structure and ornament . . . was entirely Master Jones's invention
and design. . . . All which I willingly acknowledge for him ; since it is
a virtue planted in good natures, that what respects they wish to obtain
fruitfully from others they will give ingenuously themselves ' (Queens).

* * The artificial! part onely speakes Master Inago Jones ’ (Tethys'
Festival) ; * I suppose few have ever seen more neat artifice than Master
Inigo Jones shewed in contriving their motion, who in all the rest of the
workmanship which belonged to the whole invention shewed extraordinary
industry and skill, which if it be not as lively exprest in writing as it
appear^ in view, rob not him of his due, but lay the blame on my want
of right apprehending his instructions for the adorning his art ' (Lords),

i8o

THE COURT

It was not until Caroline days that the smouldering antagon*
ism between Jonson and Jones broke out into open warfare,
and stung Jonson to various indiscretions^ amongst them the
ironical outburst of the famous Expostulation —

Painting and carpentry are the soul of masque ! '

Of thirteen spectacular masks given at court from 1605 to
16x3 nine were certainly contrived by Jones, and there is no
positive evidence that the other four were not his.^ He had
also a share in the preparations for Prince Henry’s barriers
of 1610. When the prince set up his household in the following
December Jones w’as appointed surveyor of his works. After
Henry’s death he obtained a reversion of a similar appoint-
ment in the royal Office of Works, but this reversion did not
fall in until the death of Simon Basil on i October 1615,
and after the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth in 1613
Jones paid a visit of some duration to Italy. He therefore
took no part in the masks for the Somerset wedding during
the following winter. For one at least of these. Campion’s
Mask of Squires^ his substitute was Constantine de’ Servi,
a Florentine who had also been in the service of Henry as
his architect ; but Campion was not pleased with his coad-
jutor, and wrote that * he being too much of himself, and no
way to be drawn to impart his intentions, failed so far in the
assurance he gave that the main invention, even at the last
cast, was of force drawn into a far narrower compass than
was from the beginning intended ’. Jones was back in
England by 29 January 1615, and was to plan many more
masks before his death in 1652. But none can be definitely
ascribed to him before Jonson’s Mask of Christmas in 1617.
During the latter part of his career he was busy as an architect,
and the present banqueting-house in Whitehall, built during
1619-22, represents a fragment of one of his grandiose
schemes for the complete reconstruction of the old palace.

The concentrated setting, as it took shape in the first period

' Cunningham, Jonson, iii. 21 1.

* Mask of Blackness (1605) ; Hymenaei (1606) ; Haddington Mask (1608) ;
Mask of Queens (1609); Tethys* Festival (1610); Oheron (1611); Love
Freed from Ignorance arid Folly (itii) ; Lords^ Mask (1613) ; Chapman* s
Mask (1613). The designers of the Hay Mask (1607), Beaumont* s Mask
(1613), and the Mask of the Twelve Months are not named. Jonson says
that the scene of the Mask of Beauty (1608) was * put in act * by the King's
Master Carpenter. This was an officer of the Works, one William POrtington
(J'*PP» Carpenters* Company, 165). He was not necessarily the designer,
but Jonson does not, as one would expect, mention Jones. Love Restored
(1612) had a chariot, but perhaps no scene. The Irish Mask (1613) seems
to be a Jacobean example of the simple mask. The Caversham Mask
(1613) is another, but this was not at court.

THE MASK

i8i

of Inigo Jones, appears to have been regularly designed on
the principle of what is sometimes called the ‘ picture-stage
It was framed by a proscenium arch, from side to side of
which stretched, at first view, a curtain. This arch was of
a familiar Renaissance type. On either side were pilasters,
or statuesquely modelled figures, or a combination of the two,
which bore up a frieze. The decorations were in harmony
with the theme of the mask and the frieze might contain
a scroll or panel setting forth its title.^ It cannot perhaps be
demonstrated that Jones invariably used a proscenium from
the beginning, but at any rate by 1608 [Haddington Mask)

* the arch ’ appears to have been a recognized element of
a setting. The most elaborate description of a proscenium
is that written by Jones himself for Tethys' Festival in 1610.
On this occasion the proscenium was itself covered by
a curtain until the audience were seated. It is possible,
however, that it sometimes framed a front curtain. The
use of curtains was, of course, no innovation. They had
served, when concealment and revelation were required, both
in the mobile and in the fixed settings of earlier days. Thus
for an Elizabethan mask of 1565, of which the pageant was
‘ a rock or hill for the ix musses to singe vppone the Revels
Office had provided * a vayne of sarsnett drawen vpp and
downc before them The Jacobean curtain itself might
form part of the setting. It was painted to represent a wooded
‘ landtschap ’ [Blackness)^ clouds [Hay Mask, Tethys' Festival),
night [Beauty), a red cliff [Haddington Mask), a city wall and
gate [Flowers), But at an early moment it was removed,
to * discover ’ a more solidly constructed scene within. Often
it is called a ‘ traverse and when it is * drawne ’ it may either

* slide away ’, or ‘ sink down ’ [Marston's Mask),^ I have
not come across a certain case in which it was drawn up,
either directly by a roller, or diagonally by cords towards
the corners of the proscenium ; but these methods may also
have been employed. In some masks the drawing of the
curtain ‘ discovered ’ the maskers on the scene ; in others
their entry was deferred and variously contrived. The
maskers, and sometimes the presenters, had, before the

^ A far more thorough treatment than is possible for me will be found
in the chapter on la Mise en Seine, in Reyher, 332.

* Designs by Jones for proscema (of Choline date) arc reproduced by
Lawrence (i. 97), The Mounting of the Carolan Masques ; on proscenium
titles, cf. Lawrence, i. 46.

® FeuiUerat, EHz. 117 ; cf. Halle, ii. 87*

' An ingenious paper on The Story of a Peculiar Stage Curtain in Lawrence,
i. 109, suggests an affiliation between this sinking curtain and the Roman
aulaeum.

i82

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actual dances began, to come forward through the proscenium
arch to the dancing place, which was on the floor of the hall,
or on a stage only slightly raised above it, and was regularly
laid with green cloth by the official * mattleyer ’ of the court.^
This advance was managed in divers ways. The old device
of a movable pageant might be revived, as an element sub-
sidiary to the fixed scene, and the maskers brought in on
a chariot {Queens^ Oberon)^ or enthroned on a floating isle
[Beauty), They might be let down by a cloud from the upper
part of the scene [Hymenaei^ Lords' Mask), For the Mask
of Blackness Jones made an artificial sea on a wheeled stage,
which lifted them forwards in a concave shell. It was quite
effective as a spectacle, if they stepped in their bravery
down a slope [Hay Mask) or a double stairway [Chapman' s
Masky Squires) leading from the scene to the lower level of
the dancing place.

The adoption of the concentrated setting was a matter of
convenience ; it did not mean that the mask could dispense
with the variety of interest which the multiplied scenes of the
dispersed setting had afforded. Jones’s chief problem as
a producer was that of securing this variety of interest
under new conditions, and if possible with some added
sensation of curiosity or surprise. One device was to retain
the multiplied scenes, and to juxtapose them, or to superim-
pose one upon another within the frame of the proscenium.
It was easy enough to divide the curtain either vertically
or horizontally and to ‘ draw ’ the sections separately. Thus
in the Hymenaei^ which was a double mask, the altar of
Hymen and the globe containing the men maskers were first
discovered below. Subsequently the ‘ upper part of the scene ’
opened, and the women maskers floated out on nimbi. In
Lord Hay's Mask there was a ‘ double veil ’ of which the lesser
part covered a Bower of Flora on the right of the stage, and
the greater part covered a House of Night on the left, and
a grove and hill crowned by a Tree of Diana in the centre.
This method paid homage to the tradition of the dispersed
setting ; another, which could be used in combination with
the first, was capable of more intricate development. The
manoeuvre of the front curtain might be repeated. The whole,
or a fragment, of the inner scene might be shifted, so as to
discover a new vision which had at first been concealed.
Often this was only a local and particular transformation.
Thus it was in the two masks just cited, when the globe
behind the altar of Hymen revolved and showed the maskers

Chamber Accounts’, c£. Reyher, 358.

JHE MASK 183

seated in a cave, or the trees in the grove of Diana were
drawn into the ground, and the maskers appeared out of their
cloven tops. Similarly the splitting of a rock, to let out
personages concealed therein, is an incident which recurs
in more than one mask [Haddington Mask, Oberon^ Chap-
man's Mask). The development of the antimask, with the
emphatic contrast between the grotesque and the magnificent
which this implied, seems to have been the motive which
led to the introduction of more wholesale changes of scene.
In the Mask of Queens the background for the antimask was
a Hell, and when it was over ‘ the whole face of the scene
altered, scarce suffering the memory of such a thing ’, and
in place of the Hell appeared a House of Fame. In Mercury
Vindicated^ again, the Laboratory of the antimasks gave
way to a Bower of Nature for the mask proper. In Oberon
the antimask was before a cliff with a rising moon, and there-
after the scene twice opened, to disclose, first the ‘ frontispiece ’
and then the interior of a palace of Fays. The art of trans-
formation was perhaps carried to its greatest extent during
this period in the Lords' Mask for the Princess Elizabeth’s
wedding, of which the Venetian ambassador in his report to
the Signory especially noted the three changes of scene as
an outstanding feature. This elaborate spectacle affords
examples of nearly all the devices of juxtaposition, super-
imposition, partial and complete transformation, by which
a variety of scenic interest is reconciled with a concentrated
setting. The original scene was horizontally divided. The
lower half, which was first discovered, contained side by side
a wood, a thicket of Orpheus, and a cave of Mania. Before
this danced the antimask. Then a curtain fell from the
upper part of the scene, and discovered amongst clouds
Prometheus and eight Stars. The Stars were individually
transformed to men maskers, and the clouds to the House
of Prometheus. Beneath torch-bearers emerged and danced,
still in front of the wood. The whole face of the scene was
then overspread with a cloud on which the men maskers
descended. The lower part of the scene was then changed
from a wood to a fagade of niches containing statues, which
were individually transformed into women maskers. The
mask proper followed, and when the dancing was over, there
was a final change of the whole scene to a porticoed perspec-
tive, leading up to the obelisk of Sibylla. Even by 1613
the art of Jones had handsomely accomplished its task of
ministering to the pride of the eyes. In his later or Caroline
period he advanced to even greater triumphs, and did not
shrink from the decorative and mechanical difficulties

THE COURT

184

entailed by as many as five changes of scene.^ The actual
mechanism employed by Jones to obtain his effects is
perhaps better known to us for this later period, in
view of the numerous plans and designs preserved at
Chatsworth and elsewhere, than for the earlier one. The
action of a mask was in all cases ‘ continuous and there-
fore he was happily debarred from the awkward modern
convention of a drop-curtain. Jones ultimately worked out
a system of back-cloths and shutters or flats, arranged and
painted so as to produce a perspective and an illusion of solid
scenery. These ran in horizontal grooves, so that those
belonging to one scene could be placed close behind those
belonging to another, and each set could be successively
removed by lateral withdrawal. It was, in fact, a multiplied
use of the primitive ‘ traverse ’ or sliding curtain. This
system may have already been at his disposal in the Jacobean
period ; it was well adapted, in particular, for the splitting
of a rock. But it is clear that he also used a device based
upon a different principle, a machina versaiilis^ which by
means of a circular motion was capable of displaying succes-
sively the different faces of a comparatively solid decorative
structure placed upon it. Jonson applies the term machina
versatilis to the House of Fame in the Mask of Queens.
Presumably the rotating globe in Hymenaei and the rotating
throne of Beauty in the Mask of Beauty are other examples ;
and yet another is furnished by Tethys' Festival, where how-
ever the true was used, not to carry scenery, but to cover
a change of scene by directing the attention of the spectators
to three whirling circles of lights and glasses. It is hardly
necessary to dwell upon such subsidiary devices as the trap-
doors in the floor of the stage, or the pulleys by which floating
clouds were let down from the heavens, for such obvious
and primitive machinery had been familiar, long before the
advent of Jones, as an element in the rudimentary technique
of the popular theatre.*

The approximation of mask to drama entailed by the
adoption of the concentrated setting was not the only point
of interaction between these parallel forms of mimesis. In
the first instance it was perhaps the drama, rather than the
mask, which underwent an influence. The various forms of
spectacular entertainment with which the mask became
entangled during the fifteenth century might be introduced
at more than one moment in the long story of a Renaissance
festival. They were equally well adapted to enliven the

‘ Reyher, 367.

- Cf. ch. XX.

THE MASK 185

intervals between the courses of a meal, and the intervals
between the parts of an organized dramatic performance.
The detached character of the Senecan chorus, and the
Roman practice of dividing up tragedies and comedies into
acts, which was itself a departure from the Greek principle
of continuous action, facilitated this intrusive development ;
and in the history of the Italian stage, as it shaped itself
at Ferrara and elsewhere from i486 until the middle of the
next century, nothing is more remarkable than the tendency
to bury the actual play, tragedy or comedy, classical or
modern, in a wilderness of decorative intermedii^ ordinarily
consisting of dances and song, framed in some ingenuity of
allegorical, mythological, or other device.^ It is, I think,
a true affiliation which traces to the intermedii the analogous
dumb-shows of English usage.^ These belong primarily to the
learned court drama, with its admitted classical and Italian
inspiration. To some extent they found their way also on to
the popular stage, which had, moreover, its own simpler
devices for the avoidance of monotony in the way of ‘ jigs *
and * themes But the influence of the dumb-show upon
the drama is not wholly to be measured by the extent to which
it was adopted as a formal element in the structure of plays.
It introduced a spectacular tendency, which continued to
prevail long after the position of the dumb-show as an inter-
act had been surrendered. Indeed, the extreme Italian
development of the intermedii constituted a danger against
which the lovers of a purer dramatic art were soon in protest.^
If tragedy and comedy had not succeeded in absorbing
spectacle, they would have been overwhelmed by it. The
first battle was won when it was admitted that the subjects
of the intermedii ought to be related to the theme of the
drama, which was by no means always the case at Ferrara ;
the second when the spectacle was taken out of the intervals
between the acts and treated as an integral part of the action.
This is the normal, although not of course the invariable,
Elizabethan practice. Elizabethan drama is abundantly
spectacular, and often enough the spectacle is irrelevant or
excessive, but as a rule it is, formally at least, within the plot.
There are the drums and tramplings of battles and trials
and funerals. There are the divine epiphanies in mytho-
logical pieces. There are the endless opportunities afforded

‘ Cf. ch. xix.

* Cunliffe, The Influence of Italian on Early Elizabethan Drama (3f. P.
Iv* S97). and Early English Classical Tragedies, xl.

* F. A. Foster, Dumb Show in Elizabethan Drama before 1620 (E. S.

xliv. 8) ; cf. ch. xviii. ^ Cunliffe, xxxi, xxxix.

i86

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for song and dance by banquets, weddings, and rustic merry-
makings. And if all else fails, what more easy than to intro-
duce a dumb-show in a dream or as a specimen of the magician’s
art ? ^ A somewhat paradoxical type of incorporated spectacle
is the play within the play, as we find it, for example, in
Hamlet, where indeed the inner play has the further elabora-
tion of its accompanying dumb-show.^ And with the play
within the play comes the mask within the play. In the
mtermedii the mask, as already suggested, tended to lose its
individuality. There were dancers, no doubt, and the
dancers were disguised, and might be masked ; and there
are signs of an extended use of the term ‘ mask ’ to cover
such an entertainment.^ But the characteristic feature of
the mask proper, the taking out of spectators to dances,
did not lend itself to the conditions of performances given
while the spectators sat at meat, or of performances on the
raised and isolated stage of an interlude. When a mask proper
was closely associated with an early Tudor play, it was as an
after-piece rather than as an inter-act. The dancers of the
intermedii kept to themselves, and if the sexes intermingled
it was in a ‘ double ’ choir. But when the spectacles became
episodes, instead of intermedii, the central incident of the
mask could be restored. Dancers who were personages
of a play could obviously ‘ take out ’ spectators who were also
personages of the same play ; and the introduction of a mask,
generally as a revel in a royal feast or wedding banquet,
becomes a regular dramatic device at least from the last
decade of the sixteenth century onwards. Perhaps the first
example is in an academic play. Gager’s Ulysses Redux of
1592, where at the beginning of Act II ‘ Proci larvati alicunde
prodeunt, saltantquc in scena ’, and as we learn from the
criticism of Rainolds, some of Penelope’s handmaids, seated
amongst the audience, were ‘ entreated by the wooers to rise

‘ For the spectacle as dream, cf Henry VIII, iv 2 ; Cymbeline, v. 4,
which, like the epiphany in A. Y. L. v. 4, perhaps illustrates the point
all the better in that it is probably an interpolation ; for the spectacle
as magic show, Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, 515, 721, 1263 ; Macbeth, iv. i ;
Tempest, iii. 3, and the mock magic of Merry Wives, v. 5. The mask of
Tempest, iv i, is of course both mask and magic.

Hamlet, hi. 2. 146. On the play within a play, cf. H. Schwab, Das
Schauspxel tm Schauspiel zur Zeit Shaksperes (1896).

* In Spanish Tragedy, 1. 5, Hieronimo brings in a ‘pompous jest' in
which three knights hang up their scutcheons and capture three kings.
This is called a ' mask ' (1. 23), but there is no dance, only a dumb-show
interpreted by Hieronimo. Similarly the ‘ Maske of Cupid ' in Spenser,
F. Q. III. xii, is merely an allegorical procession, without a dance. Later,
Dekker and Ford's play of The Sun's Darling (1656) is described on the
title-page as ' a moral masque ’.

THE MASK

187

and danse upon the stage Shakespeare has a mask in
Love's Labour's Lost, and another in Romeo and Juliet, to
which the episode is handed down from the ultimate source
in Italian narrative.^ Another early example is in i Richard II
(iv. 2). Munday has a mask in his Death of Robert Earl of
Huntingdon {1598 ; ii. 2), Dekker (ii. 204) in his Whore of
Babylon (c, i6oy) and his Satiromastix {1601 ; 1. 2302), and
Tourneur, if it was Tourneur, in his Revenger's Tragedy
[c. i6oy ; V. 3). These are examples from the public theatres.
When the boys’ companies came into existence at the end
of the century, dance and song proved well within their
means ; and their principal writers, Marston, Chapman,
Middleton, Field, Jonson, all make use of the mask.^ So
do Beaumont and Fletcher, both in plays for boys and in
plays for menA But the enumeration of earlier names is
of itself enough to dispose of the theory that to Beaumont and
Fletcher is due, in some special way, the transference of the
court mask to the popular stage, and in particular the intro-
duction of Shakespeare to the supposed new idea. Doubtless
the mask in A Maid's Tragedy is set out with somewhat
greater elaboration of presentment than was usual in earlier
plays, and doubtless the antimask of Beaumont’s contribu-
tion to the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding was furbished up
again for the delight of a popular audience in The Two Noble
Kinsmen, But it hardly follows that Shakespeare, after using
the mask in Love's Labour's Lost and Romeo afid Juliet, had
anything to learn from his younger rivals before he used it in
The Tempest, and a writer who can assert that Ben Jonson
* did not mix his masques and plays ’ must have simply
forgotten Cynthia's Revels,^ The mask in this play is of

' Cf. Boas, 206.

- L. L. L. w. 2 \ R. J. 1. 4, 5. Similarly the mask in Hen. Vlll, 1. 4,
is suggested by the histone source. In M. V. ii. 5, 28, Shylock ^varns
Jessica against masks in the street, with their drum and ' wry-necked
fife but none is shown.

^ Marston, i Antonio and Melltda (1599 '• v. i), 2 Antonio and Mellida
(1599 , V. I, 2), Hutch Courtesan (1603 , iv. i). Malcontent (1604 ; v. 2, 3),
Insatiate Countess (c. 1610 ; 11. i) ; Chapman, May Day (1602 ; v. i).
Widow's Tears (1603 ; hi. 2), Byron's Tragedy (1608 , ii i) . Middleton,
The Old Law (a mask in a tavern, J599 , iv. i). Blurt Master Constahle
(c. 1600 , ii. 2), A Mad World, my Masters (c. 1604-6 ; ii. 2, 4, 5), Your
Five Gallants (1607 ; iv. 8 ; v. i, 2), No Wit, no Help, like a Woman's
(c. 1613 ; iv. 2) ; Field, A Woman is a Weathercock {c. 1609 ; v. i, 2) ;
Jonson, Cynthia's Revels (1601 ; iv. 5, 6 ; v. 1-5).

* The Coxcomb (j6io ; i. i). Maid's Tragedy (j6ii , i. i, 2), Four Plays
in One (1612 ; i. v), Two Noble Kinsmen (not strictly a mask, 1613 ; iii. 5),
Henry VIII (1613 ; i. 4), WU at Several Weapons (1614 ; v. i).

® A. H. Thorndike, The Influence op the Court-Masques on the Drama

i88

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special interest, because it is Elizabethan and antedates
by some four years the first of the long series of Jonson’s
Jacobean masks. It occupies, in the quarto version, the
greater part of the last seven scenes of the play. In iv. 5 Arete,
a principal lady at court, desires revels for Cynthia, and
Amorphus proposes a * masque ’. Arete undertakes to send
for Criticus, and get his advice.^ In iv. 6 Criticus hesitates
to write for such revellers as Amorphus and his crew. Arete
encourages him. The presence will restrain them when they
are masked, and Cynthia needs the opportunity to reform
them. Criticus then invokes Apollo and Mercury. In v. i
Cynthia, awaiting the mask, holds flattering discourse with
Arete on its author. In v. 2 enters * the first masque
Cupid ‘ disguised like Anteros *, presents four virgins from
the palace of Perfection, Storge, Aglaia, Euphantaste, and
Apheleia. He interprets their devices, and presents on their
behalf a crystal, in which Cynthia sees her own image.
In V. 3 Cynthia discusses the mask with Criticus and Arete.
In V. 4 enters * the second masque *. Mercury presents and
interprets the four sons of Eutaxia, who are Eucosmos,
Eupathes, Eutolmos, and Eucolos. In iv. 5 ‘ the masques
joyne They dance the first, second, and third ‘ straine ’,
while Cupid and Mercury converse, outside the cadre of the
mask. The dancers do not proceed to ‘ take out ’ spectators,
but that is presumably because they are interrupted by
Cynthia, who bids them unmask and administers her reproof.

The masks inserted in plays are rarely described with any-
thing like the fullness of Cynthia's Revels, although there is
a fair amount of detail in The Maid's Tragedy and a somewhat
less amount in Your Five Gallants and in No Wit, no Help,
like a Woman's, It must be borne in mind that the main
action of a mask was mute, and that the stage directions
of the printed texts are not intended to be descriptive. More-
over, the structural place of the mask in a plot often leads,
as in Cynthia's Revels, to its abrupt termination. The dis-
guises cover an intrigue of murder {2 Antonio and Mellida,
Revenger's Tragedy) or of robbery {A Mad World, my Masters),
or of elopement [A Woman is a Weathercock), Or a quarrel
breaks out {Dutch Courtesan), or a masker is discovered to be
dead {Satiromastix). As a rule, too, the presenters’ speeches

(M, L, A. XV. 114) , The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere,
130, 148.

' I think Criticus must here be taken to be Jonson's self-portrait. He
told Drummond in 1619 that * by Criticus is understood Done ' {Con-
vcrsations, 6) : but the reference there app)ears to be to the lost * preface
of his ojf Poeste ' In the folio text of the play Criticus becomes Crites.

THE MASK

189

are omitted or cut short, since it is spectacle, and not mere
dialogue, that is required.^ Nevertheless, in its main features,
the dramatized mask confirms what we know of the mask
from other sources. It has its dancers, its presenters, its
torch-bearers, and its music.^ Your Five Gallants adds
‘ shield boys ’ to carry the ‘ devices When the performers
have finished their measures, they generally take out the
ladies. At the end they unmask, ‘ honour ’ the guests
[A Women is a Weathercock)^ and depart, or proceed to a ban-
quet. And in some interesting points the dramatized mask
supplements other information. To begin with, it is a simpler
type of mask than is represented by the full Jacobean descrip-
tions. For obvious reasons architectural pageantry could
hardly be introduced. In The Maid's Tragedy there is a rock,
in Satiromastix a chair ; in May Day Cupid ‘ descends
a feat, as already noted, well within the compass of an
ordinary theatre. And that is about all. You get the mask
as it was practised at Elizabeth’s court, rather than at that
of James. Then there are sometimes subsidiary scenes,
which throw light upon aspects of the mask, not much
dwelt on in the Jacobean descriptions. Often there is a scene
of preparation, when the ‘ maskery ’ is planned, and a
‘ device ’, * imprezza or * mott ’ ordered of the painter,
or * a few tinsel coats ’ of the vizard-maker (jr Antonio and
Mellida^ Insatiate Countess, A Mad World, my Masters,
Your Five Gallants, A Woman is a Weathercock), Or there is
a scene of bustle, when a ‘ state ’ and canopy are set up in
the ‘ presence ’ {Satiromastix) and room is made for the
dancers, either by the cry of ‘ A hall, a hall I ’ {Romeo and
Juliet, May Day) or by the more violent ministrations of the
torch-bearers (A Woman is a Weathercock) or of court officials.
Thus in The Maid's Tragedy the mask is preluded by the
activities of Calianax, the lord chamberlain, who ‘ would run
raging among them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his
own in the twinkling of an eye ’, and of Diagoras the gentle-
man usher, who is keeping the doors against the impatient
crowd without, and placing the ladies, all except those who
come in ‘ the king’s troop ’, in a gallery ‘ above ’. There

^ The maskers in Wit at Several Weapons, v. i, are ‘ something like the
abstract of a masque ’ ; cf. R J. i. 4. 3 —

The date is out of such prolixity.

We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf,

Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath.

Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper ;

Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
After the prompter, for our entrance.

* Satiromastix, 2325, * The watch-word in a maske is the bolde drum

THE COURT

190

is a similar scene in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Four Plays in
One^ a piece which consists of three short playlets, divided by
‘ triumphs ’ or intermedii^ and concluded by a mask. This
may be regarded as an experiment, in which the influence
of the mask-tradition has exceptionally modified the typical
structure of the drama. Nor does it stand quite alone.
Peele’s Arraignment of Paris is of course spectacular through-
out, and the last scene, in which the golden apple is handed
to Elizabeth, is clearly, in its recognition of the audience,
a divergence from the normal detachment of the drama.^
Perhaps the smae may be said of the epithalamic end of
A Midsummer- Night' s Dream^ but as a rule the element of
mask remains an episode, and does not dominate the play
which admits it.

The debt of the mask to the play may be traced in the
increased skill in which the later masks are arranged around
a ‘ device * or dramatic idea. The mask had had its presenters
as far back as Lydgate. Even in a learned court, the more
recondite forms of allegory or mythology sometimes require
explanation. The maskers proper seem to have been tradi-
tionally mum and therefore unable to explain themselves.
Let us remember that they were not professional actors, but
English men and women of good birth and breeding, and
that therefore their limbs could more easily be trained than
their wits and voices. If explanation was required, it must
be given in an introductory speech by a subsidiary per-
former. Such a spokesman seems to have been known to
the Elizabethan Revels as a ‘ truchman ’ or interpreter.^
In addition to his function of elucidation he became the natural
vehicle of whatever compliment was to be paid by the mask,
and when Arthur Throgmorton wished to turn the heart of

^ I do not wish to- exaggerate this detachment. Peele builds upon the
customary prayer for the -queen or lord at the end of an interlude (cf.
chh. X, xviii, xxii), and there are the plays with inductions, such as The
Taming of the Shrew and The Knight of the Burning Pestle, in which the
personages of the induction mediate between the action and the audience.

2 I find * tronchwoman ’ (Feuillerat, Eliz. 217)/ troocheman ’ (Feuillerat,
Eliz. 287), * trounchman * (Gascoigne, i. 85), and as interpreters of mimetic
tilts ‘ crocheman * (Halle, i. 13), ‘ trounchman ' (Peele, Polyhymnia, 47) ;
also ‘ an interpreter or a truchman ' accompanying the ‘ orator speaking
a straunge language ' in the train of the Lord of Misrule in 1552-3 (Feuil-
lerat, Edw. and M. 89, 123). W. D. Macray has the following note to
* truckman ' which appears in the text of Clarendon, History, i. 75, ‘ i. e.
truchman dragoman. In the old editions the word “interpreter” was
substituted as an explanation ; in the last editions ** trustman ” was given
as the reading of the MS.'. N. E. D. gives the earliest use of the word as
1485 and derives through Med. Lat. iurchemannus from Arab, turjamdn,
interpreter, whence also dragoman.

Elizabeth in 1595, we find him undertaking the part himself.
The Elizabethan truchmen do not seem to have got much
beyond formal speeches, and the child dressed as Mercury
or Cupid became rather banal through much repetition.
If anything more dramatic was attempted, either through
the presenters, or by dividing the dancers into a double mask,
it was apt to be based upon the mediaeval idea of an assault.
In the device for the abortive masks of 1562 the presenters
were to do most of the fighting. In 1559, other hand,

it was successive bands of maskers that rifled and rescued
the Queen’s maids. How far the mask of Diana and Actaeon
in the following winter took a dramatic form we do not
know. The development of the mask on dramatic lines
seems to have been a slow business. Even Jonson, in Cynthia's
Revels, has not got beyond Cupid and Mercury and the
formal speeches. On the other hand, the Gray’s Inn mask,
which preceded Cynthia's Revels by some years, and nearly
all the Jacobean masks, especially Jenson’s, show a marked
progress in this respect. A dramatic idea is nearly always
dominant, and there is ingenuity in grouping the fixed elements
of the mask about it. A comparison between Gascoigne’s
treatment of a wedding mask in 1572 and Jonson’s in 1608
may serve to illustrate this. Gascoigne’s maskers are Mon-
tagues of Italy, who have been driven by a storm to the
shores of England, and take the opportunity to visit their
English kinsmen, in whose house the wedding happens to
be taking place. The idea is not without point, but it is all
expounded in a single and inevitably tedious speech by the
truchman, during which the dancers must remain motionless.
When Jonson has to celebrate the wedding of James Ramsay
and Elizabeth Radcliffe in 1608 he proceeds very differently.
Even the curtain introduces the hymeneal theme with its
graceful symbolism of a red cliff. From the top of this Venus
descends with her Graces. She is in search of her son, and bids
the Graces ask whether he is concealed in the eyes or between
the swelling breasts of the ladies in the audience. The Graces
sing their appeal for the discovery of ‘ Venus’ runaway ’.
Cupid now emerges, with a train of Joci and Risus, each
bearing two torches, who dance a dance of triumph. Venus
captures Cupid, and demands the cause of his jubilation.
He slips away, but the explanation is given by Hymen,
in a speech of flattery to the King on the ‘ state ’, to the
bridegroom who saved the King’s life, and to the maid of the
Red Cliff, who is the bride. Hymen is followed by Vulcan,
who splits the cliff, and discloses a concave fashioned by his
art, in which sit the maskers. They are the twelve Signs of

192

THE COURT

the Zodiac, to each of whom is assigned some influence upon
marriage. They advance and dance their measures, while
Vulcan’s attendants, the Cyclopes, Brontes and Steropes,
beat time with their sledges, and in the pauses of the dancing
the musicians, dressed as priests of Hymen, sing the verses
of an epithalamion. How neatly it is all done ! The maskers,
the presenters, the torch-bearers, the musicians, all have their
place in the scheme, and contribute towards the compliment-
ing of the bridal pair.

It would perhaps be difficult to say how far the approxima-
tion to drama in the Jacobean masks was due to the sub-
conscious mental processes of mask poets who were themselves
j playwrights, and how far to a deliberate intention to combine
jtwo arts.^ As a rule it is safe to credit Jonson, at least, with
[fully conscious artistry. And here too the model set by
i Baldassarino’s Balet Cotnique must not be neglected. ’ The
printed description of this contains a preface, in which
Baldassarino justifies his use of the term ‘ comique ’ on the
ground that he has arranged his ‘ balet ’ in acts and scenes
like a comedy, and claims to be an innovator in this inter-
weaving of poetry with the dance, to which ‘ le premier
tiltre et honneur * are still left. The Jacobean poets did not
essay a treatment by acts and scenes, which indeed has no
great significance even in the Balet Comique, But Baidas-

^ Generally speaking, the themes of the Jacobean masks are more
literary than those of their Elizabethan precursors. The following analysis
is based upon the disguises of the maskers, which may be classed under
four main heads : National Types — (Elizabethan), Moors, Swart Rutters.
Lance-Knights, Hungarians, Barbarians, Venetian Patriarchs, Italian
Women, Venetians, Turks ; (Jacobean), Indian and Chinese Knights.
Virginians, Irishmen. Occupations — (Elizabethan), Ecclesiastics, Fisher-
wives, Marketwives, Astronomers, Shipmen, Country Maids, Clowns,
Hunters, Filters, Fishermen and Fruitwives, Mariners, Foresters. Warriors,
Pedlars, Seamen ; (Jacobean), none. Inanimate Objects — (Elizabethan),
none ; (Jacobean), Signs of Zodiac. Stars and Statues. Flowers. Abstrac-
tions — (Elizabethan), Nusquams, Virtues, Passions ; (Jacobean), Humours
and Affections, Ornaments of Court, Months. Historical and Mythical
Personages — (Elizabethan), Conquerors, Huntsmen of Actaeon and
Nymphs of Diana, Wise and Foolish Virgins, Satyrs, Greek Goddesses.
Janus, Sages, Wild Men, Amazons and Knights, Knights of Purpulia,
Muses ; (Jacobean), Goddesses, Daughters of Niger (W^), Powers of Juno,
Knights of Apollo, Sons of Mercury, N)rmphs of English Rivers, Knights
of Oberon, Daughters of Morn, Knights of Olympia, Disenchanted Knights,
Sons of Nature, Circe's Lovers, Sons of Phoebus. It is possible that the
mediaeval barbatoriae (Mediaeval Stage, i. 362) were dances representing
national types. Jean d’Auton (Chroniques, ii. 99) describes, amongst
other mommeries at the court of Louis XII in 1 501, * une danse en barboire.
en laquelle fut danc^ k la mode de France, d'Allemaigne, d'Espaigne et
Lombardye. et k la fin en la mani^e de Poictou . . lesquelz estoyent

tons habillez k la sorte du pays dont ils dancerent k la mode

THE MASK

193

sarino’s main idea, of the inhibition of the dance by the magic
of Circe until the gods come to the rescue, may fairly be
regarded as responsible for the several episodes of disenchant-
ment or transformation which recur in the work of his
successors.^

Jonson’s mask for the Ramsay-Radcliffe wedding in 1608
represents a stage of importance in the evolution of the
dramatic form. The entry of the maskers is preluded by
a dance of the torch-bearing Joci and Risus. In describing
his Mask of Queens of the following year, Jonson says,

* And because her majesty (best knowing that a principal
part of life in these spectacles lay in their variety) had
commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might
precede hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque,
I was careful to decline, not only from others, but mine own
steps in that kind, since the last year, I had an antimasque
of boys ; and therefore now devised that twelve women,
in the habit of hags or witches, sustaining the persons of
Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c., the opposites to good
Fame, should fill that part, not as a masque, but a spectacle
of strangeness, producing multiplicity of gesture, and not
unaptly sorting with the current and whole fall of the device

I am not quite sure what Jonson intends by the distinction
here drawn between a ‘ masque * and a ‘ spectacle for in
fact the Hags dance ‘ a magical dance full of preposterous
change and gesticulation *, which is interrupted by a burst
of loud music and an alteration in the face of the scene,
heralding the introduction of the Queens in the House of
Fame. However this may be, Jonson’s innovation, with its
obvious advantages of added variety, must have been
immediately successful, for in practically all subsequent
examples of the period the antimask appears as a fixed
element in the scheme, preceding and setting off what Beau-
mont calls the ‘ maine ’ mask, and usually divided from it
by a change of scene.^ There are some slight further elabora-
tions to record. In Oberon, in the Lords' Mask^ and in
Chapman's Maskj the antimask is followed by a dance of
torch-bearers, to which also Chapman gives the name of

* antimask Beaumont's Mask, the Mask of Squires, Mer-
cury Vindicated, and Browne's Mask have each two regular

‘ Gesia Grayorum ; Hay Mask ; Lords* Mask ; Mask of Squires ; Mask
of Flowers] Browne* s Mask (introducing Circe). As late as 1632 Aurelian
Townshend and Inigo Jones borrow the episode of Circe and the Fugitive
in Tempe Restored,

* An exception is Love Restored, where the place of an antimask is taken
by the long comic induction by Masquerade, Plutus. and Robin Goodfellow.

2229* I O

194

THE COURT

antimasks, and in the Mask of Squires the second antimask is
interpolated in the middle of the dances of the main mask.
There is only one antimask in The Twelve Months^ but two
dances are assigned to it. The Mask of Flowers has, besides
the antimask ‘ of dances ’, a preliminary antimask ‘ of song
The name * antimask * has given some trouble. Jonson’s
references to ‘ a foil, or false masque * and to ' opposites *
suggest clearly enough that he used the prefix ‘ anti * to
indicate an antithesis or contrast. But in Tethys* Festival
Daniel uses the form ‘ antemasque and this spelling, prob-
ably due to a misunderstanding by the worthy Daniel of the
point of the innovation, recurs in Chapman's Mask and in
The Twelve Months} The Mask of Flowers, again, affords
a third variation, in * anticke-maske ’, and this also, I think,
pace Dr. Brotanek, must have its origin in a misunderstanding.*
An ‘ antic ’ dance is a grotesque dance, and this epithet is
often applied to the personages of the antimasks and their
evolutions, from the Haddington Mask onwards, since the
characteristic antithesis which the antimask renders possible^
is precisely the antithesis between the grotesque prelude
and the splendour of the main mask that follows.* I want
to emphasize the point that this element of contrast intro-
duced by the juxtaposition of mask and antimask is analogous
to what critics have always regarded as a special feature of
the Elizabethan, and particularly the Shakespearian drama,
the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy, either in the form
of what is called tragicomedy, or by the inclusion of scenes
of ‘ comic relief ’ in tragedy proper. It is perhaps worth
noting that in the French masks of i6io and 1612 printed by
Lacroix we find side by side with the ‘ grand ballet ’ elements
variously described as the ‘ premiere et plaisante entree ’
(1610) and * la bouffonnerie * (1612), which appear to serve just
the same purpose as the English antimask.^ But, of course,

I do not mean to suggest that either in France or in England
the grotesque made its way into the mask for the first time
during the seventeenth century. The clowns, mariners,

‘ wodwoses ’ and so forth of the earlier Elizabethan revels
must have lent themselves to humorous treatment, and indeed
mirth has at all times been of the essence of revels. There

‘ Chapman also uses the phrase * mocke-maske which is analogous
to Jonson's ' antimasque *.

* Brotanek, 14 1. I find ' antick Maske ' also in an Exchequer record
(Reyher, 509) relating to the Lords* Mask of 1613.

* Cf. the opening stage-direction to James IV (1598), ‘ Enter after
Oberon, King of Fayries, an Antique, who dance about a Tombe *.

* Lacroix, i. 241, 262, 291, 296.

THE MASK

195

is some reason to think that a traditional form of grotesque
mask at court was the morris. This is of course a familiar
type of folk-dance, and may owe its Tudor name to the
moreschey which were dances introduced as intermedii into
Italian plays.^

The spectacular and literary elaboration of the Jacobean
mask must not be allowed to blind our eyes to the fact that
after all it was not a dramatic illusion but a choregraphic
compliment which remained the central purpose of the enter-
tainment. Scenery and speech and song occupy perhaps
a disproportionate share of the attention of the poets who,
to their own glorification and that of the architects, wrote
the descriptions ; but the greater part of the considerable
number of hours during which the mask lasted was devoted
to the actual dancing. And the dancing involved an intimacy,
and not a detachment, in the relation between performers
and spectators. It is true that some of the traditional features
which accompanied the mask, when court ceremonial first
took it up from folk custom, tended under the new conditions
to pass into the state of survivals. Thus the torch-bearers,
whether or not their burning brands represent some original
element of ritual in the folk festival, were certainly de rigueur
as a concomitant of the mask during the sixteenth century.
They had two clear functions. They provided, in dim halls,
the abundance of light which was so necessary to give full
value to the bright stuffs and metallic spangles worn by the
dancers. And their own costumes, harmonized or contrasting
with those of the dancers, afforded the variety of interest
which otherwise, while the presenters were still limited to
one or two ‘ truchmen ’, might have been lacking. They
were always kept in strict subordination to the maskers
proper. They were their attendants ; Hinds in a mask of
Clowns, Almains in a mask of Swart Rutters, Moorish friars
in a mask of Moors. Their garments were inferior, taffeta,
as against satin or cloth of gold. When George Ferrers, as
Lord of Misrule in 1552, had occasion to complain of the
apparel furnished by the Master of the Revels for his coun-
cillors, he wrote that the gentlemen who were to take the parts
‘ wolde not be seen in London so torchebererlyke disgysed for
asmoche as they ar worthe or hope to be worthe And
when the measures began, they had little to do, but to stand

* The relation of the morris-dance to the folk is described mThe Mediaeval
Stage, i. 195, but I think that the history of the name requires further
examination. There are traces of morris-dances at court in 1559 and 1 579,
and there was a sword-dance on 6 Jan. 1604.

* Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 59.

THE COURT

196

and look on.^ In the seventeenth century they were not so
indispensable, either for illumination, which could be better
supplied by fixed lights upon the scene, or for variety.®
And with the multiplication of other purposes the room which
they took up could ill be spared. In Tethys' Festival^ given
exceptionally during the heat of summer, there were no
torch-bearers, on the ground that * they would have pestered
the roome, which the season would not well permit ’. And
therewith begins a tendency either, as already indicated, to
merge them in the antimask, or to omit them altogether.®
The vizard again and the ceremonial unvizarding at the end
of the performance, although usual, and of course essential
parts of the tradition, do not appear to have been quite
invariable under James I.^ As early as the Mask of Blackness
in 1605, blackened faces and arms were substituted, which,
says a contemporary writer, were ‘ disguise sufficient * and an
‘ ugly sight *, and the experiment was not repeated. I do
not know that for any historic period there is evidence that
the maskers regularly brought gifts with them, although they
sometimes did, and one may suspect that such gifts repre-
sented the ‘ luck ’ of the primitive custom. A jewel was all
very well when Arthur Throgmorton wanted to use a mask
as a medium for recovering the lost favour of Elizabeth.®
But it may be assumed that Elizabeth would think it a useless
expense, when a mask was only conventionally a surprise
visit, and was really designed on her own instructions in
her own Office of the Revels. And although James did on one

* Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 38, * I’ll be a candle-holder and look on * ; c£.
Reyher, 90, citing W. Rankins, Mirrour of Monsters (1587), ' There were
certain petty fellows ready, as the custom is in maskes, to carry torches ’ ;
Westward Hoe, i. 2, * He is just like a torch-bearer to maskers ; he wears
good clothes, and is ranked in good company, but he doth nothing ' ;
Overbury, Characters (1614, ed. Rimbault, 55, / 4 n Ignorant Glory Hunter),

‘ In any shew he will be one, though he be but a whiffler or a torch-bearer

* A disguising of 1501 had Already ‘ a goodly pageant made round after
the fashion of a lanthome cast out with many proper and goodly windows
fenestred with fine lawne wher in were more than an hundred great lightes ’
(Reyher, 503).

® Before 1610 torch-bearers may have been omitted from Hymenaei and
the Haddington Mask ; after 1610, they are only noticed in Oberon, the
Lords* Mask, and Chapman* s Mask.

^ The descriptions often say nothing of vizards, but probably they take
them for granted, for as late as 1618 Chamberlain writes of the Gray’s Inn
Mask of Mountebanks (Birch, ii. 66), * I cannot call it a masque, seeing
they were not disguised, nor had vizards *. Similarly the unmasking is
rarely described (Indian and Chinese Knights ; Twelve Goddesses ; Hay
Mask), and may have been omitted as a formal stage, especially when the
maskers danced oflf into the pageant.

® Cf. p. 168.

THE MASK

197

occasion pay no less than £40,000 for the jewel used in the
mask of Indian and Chinese Knights, this was in the first
year of his reign, when his predecessor’s hoarded wealth was
still there for the lavishing, and the special purpose was to be
served of impressing Henri IV through his diplomatic repre-
sentative.^ When there were gifts, they were as a rule
trifling, and incidental to the ‘ device ’ of the mask. The
abortive scheme of 1562 provides for a grandguard and a
sword and girdle. Elizabeth got on one occasion flowers
of silk and gold, signifying victory, peace, and plenty ; on
another snowballs of lamb’s wool sweetened with rose-water
in a mask of Janus ; on a third looking-glasses with posies
inscribed on them in a mask of Pedlars. In The Twelve
Goddesses the maskers presented their emblems, and Sibylla
laid them in the temple. In the Mask of Blackness the
Daughters of Niger presented their fans. In Tethys' Festival
there were a trident for James and a sword, worth 20,000
crowns, and a scarf for Henry. In the Mask of Squires
Anne plucked a bough from a golden tree, wherewith to
disenchant the Knights. Often the gifts were represented
by the merely conventional offering of a copy of verses, or
of shields bearing imprese or painted allegorical devices, such
as were also brought by the runners in tilts. ^ These some-
times required interpretation and led to some preliminary
* commoning * with the guests of honour. Interchanges
of wit at this stage between Elizabeth and Mary Fitton in
1600 and James and Philip Herbert in 1604 are upon record.
But of course the chief ‘ commoning ’ was when the maskers
‘ took out ’ the principal spectators of the opposite sex
to dance. Whether the Jacobean maskers kissed the ladies
whom they took out I do not know, but this was the earlier
custom.® At any rate the * taking out ’ is the critical moment
of intimacy between performers and spectators in the mask,
and serves, even more than the gifts and even more than the
personal compliments in theme and speech, to distinguish it

* Cf. ch. xxiii (Daniel, Twelve Goddesses). * Cf. ch. iv.

3 R. J. i. 5. 95 ; Hen. VIII, i. 4. 95.

I were unmannerly to take you out.

And not to kiss you.

The amorous tradition of the ' commoning which apparently frightened
some of the ladies at Henry’s court, survived under Elizabeth. In Lyly’s
Euphues and his England {Works, ii. 103), Philautus takes Camilla by the
hand in a mask and begins * to boord hir ’ in this manner, ' It hath ben
a custome faire Lady, how commendable I wil not dispute, how common
you know, that Masquers do therfore couer their faces that they may open
theiraffections, & vnder y« colour of a dance, discouer their whole desires * ;
cf. Reyher, 23.

THE COURT

198

from the drama.^ The period of ‘ intermixed * dancing
{Hymenaet), which it introduced, served as a sequel lo the
greater part of the mask proper, and is sometimes described
as ‘ the revels * {Love Freed ; Twelve Months). More precisely,
the order of the dancing, subject to minor variations, was as
follows. After the dialogue of presentation and the antimask,
the maskers entered and began a series of ‘ masque dances ’
{Oberon ; Love Freed), ‘ changes * (Malecontent ; Insatiate
Countess), or ‘ strains * {Hymenaei; Cynthia' s Revels \ A Woman
is a Weathercock). These are also called the ‘ single * dances,
to distinguish them from the * intermixed ’ dances {Blacktuss)
or more usualFy and simply, the maskers ‘ own ’ dances or
the ‘ new * dances. Sometimes the ‘ first * dance is distin-
guished from the ‘ main * dance {Twelve Months ; Lords' Mask ;
Mercury V indicated \ Golden Age). After one, two, or three

* new ’ dances, the maskers * dissolved * {Hymenaei) and
‘ took out ’ for the ‘ revels Finally they gathered again
for their ‘ going off * {Twelve Months), the ‘ last ‘ parting *,

‘ departing ’ or ‘ retiring ’ dance, which sometimes took them
‘ into the work * {Oberon). If they did not dance back

* into the work ’, they probably unmasked at this stage,
after a ceremonial reverence to the company, known as
the ‘ honour ’ {Hay Mask ; Your Five Gallants ; A Woman is
a Weathercock).^ The revels consisted partly of the solemn
figured dances known as * measures partly of ‘ lighter *
dances {Hay Mask). Those most often mentioned are the
galliard, coranto, and lavolta ; others were the brawl
{Browne' s Mask), duretto {Beaumont's Mask \ Mask of Flowers),
and morasco {Mask of Flowers).^ Of course, only ‘ ordinary ’
measures {Indian and Chinese Knights) and familiar court
dances were available for the revels. The mask dances
proper, on the other hand, as the epithet ‘ new ’ indicates,
were specially designed and carefully learnt for each occasion.
They appear to have always been ‘ measures *. Baldassarino
regards ‘ meslanges geometriques ’ as being of the essence of
the mask. The dances were a technical matter, with which
the poets were not much concerned, and they do not as a rule
attempt any notation, or even detailed description of the
figures. An occasional literary touch was, however, to their
fancy. In Hymenaei some of the figures were ‘ formed into

* Maid's Tragedy, i. 1.9, ‘ They must commend their King, and speak in
praise Of the assembly, bless the Bride and Bridegroom, In person of some
God ; th'are tyed To rules of flattery '.

* This old phrase, known to Sir T. Elyot, The Govemour, i. 22, is still
traditional in folk dances.

^ On these dances, cf. Key her, 441.

THE MASK

199

letters very signifying to the name of the bridegroom and
a^ain in the Mask of Queens one of the dances was ‘ graphically
disposed into letters, and honouring the name of the most
sweet and ingenious Prince, Charles, Duke of York These
graphic dances, which Bacon deprecates, were also used in
the French Ballet de Monseigneur le Due de Vandosme of 1610.^

It is of a piece with the intimacy between maskers and
spectators that the former appear always to have been
volunteers, and that to dance in a mask, at any rate at
court, was not derogatory even to persons of the highest
rank. I have no proof that Queen Elizabeth ever masked
in person, as her father and brother certainly did, but in
view of her notorious fondness for the exercise of the dance
it is extremely probable. Unfortunately we know very little
of the personnel of the Elizabethan masks. The Revels
Accounts^ a source of generous information on many points,
never name the maskers. Scattered notices elsewhere suggest
that they may not infrequently have been the maids of
honour. It was so when Bran tome was present in 1561, and
at Anne Russell’s wedding in 1600,. when Elizabeth, contrary
to the ordinary rule of sex-exchange, was ‘ taken ’ out by
Mary Fitton. Among the stray names of revellers that have
floated to us down the stream of time are those of George
Brooke, who came to the scaffold in 1603, and Sir Robert
Carey, who boasts of his share in all court triumphs in
1586.2 Naunton is the authority for the statement that
Sir Christopher Hatton first appeared before Elizabeth in one
of the masks which were sent from time to time as the con-
tributions of the Inns of Court to the royal gaiety.^ Lists of
the dancers in most of the Jacobean masks are preserved.
That of James himself is not among them ; he was ungainly
and indolent except on horseback. But Anne danced in her
own ‘ Queen’s ’ masks of 1604, 1605, 1608, 1609, 1610, and
probably 1611, and allowed herself to be ‘ taken out ’ as
a compliment to her hosts at Caversham as late as the summer
of 1613. With her in 1610 was the Princess Elizabeth, and
in 1608 and 1610 the Lady Arabella Stuart. Henry was
* taken out ’ as a boy and ‘ tost from hand to hand like
a tennis bal ’ by the ladies in the Twelve Goddesses of 1604.

‘ Lacroix, i. 256, 262.

• Goodman, i. 70, * George Brooks . . . brother to Cobham . . . was
a great reveller at court in the masques where the queen and greatest
ladies were * ; Carey, 6, * In all triumphs I was one ; either at tilt, tourney,
or barriers, in masque or balls

* Naunton, 44, * Sir Christopher Hatton came into the court ... as a
private gentleman of the inns of court in a mask, and for his activity and
person, which was tall and proportionable, taken into favour

200

THE COURT

He masked himself in Oberon (i6ii) and in the undatable
Twelve Months, The only appearance of Charles before i6i8
was as Zephyrus amongst the presenters of Tethys' Festival
(i6io). Next to Anne herself, the most conspicuous performer
in the Queen’s masks was perhaps Lucy Countess of Bedford,
who had already won her reputation as a ‘ fine dancing
dame ’ at the end of the previous reign, and whose costume
in one at least of her extant portraits is conjectured to repre-
sent masking attire.^ Other names which recur frequently
in the lists are those of Elizabeth Countess of Derby and her
sister Susan Countess of Montgomery, Alethea Countess of
Arundel, Anne Countess of Dorset, and Audrey Lady Wal-
singham ; while amongst the men shone the two brothers
Herbert, William Earl of Pembroke and Philip Earl of
Montgomery, and that most splendid and extravagant of all
the Jacobean courtiers, James Lord Hay. The Earl of
Somerset does not appear to have been a dancer, but when
the star of George Villiers was rising in 1615 his friends were
careful to give him his opportunity of shining in a mask.
It is not surprising to find that the numerous sons and
daughters of the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain, and the
Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse, who shared the
official oversight of the masks, were nof seldom called upon
to display their skill. One fears that there must often have
been heart-burnings. Lady Hatton’s pique at being left out
in 1605 contributed something to the strained relations with
her husband, Lord Coke, which long made mirth for London.*
The masks could not dispense altogether with professional
assistance. In the Mask of Beauty the torch-bearing Cupids
were ‘ chosen out of the best and ingenious youth of the
kingdom In Tethys' Festival the presenters included, in
addition to the Duke of York, two gentlemen ‘ of good worth
and respect ’, who played the Tritons, and the antimask
included eight ‘ little ladies, all of them the daughters of
Earls or Barons ’. But this mask was for the exceptional
occasion of the creation of Henry as Prince of Wales, and
Daniel expressly boasts that ‘ there were none of inferior
sort mixed among these great personages of state and honour
(as usually there have been) ; but all was performed by
themselves with a due reservation of their dignity The
normal practice seems to have been to hire players and their

* C. C. Slopes, A Lampoon on the Opponents of Essex, 1601 {Sh.- Jahrbuch,
xlvi. 21) ; Reyher, 98, apparently referring to the full-length portrait by
Marc Geeraerts at Woburn Abbey, reproduced in Henderson, James /,
232. It is a fantastic costume, but not obviously that of a mask.

* Wmwood, ii. 40.

THE MASK

201

boys for the antimask and for the speaking parts, which of
course required a trained elocution.^ Sometimes, however,
a part might be taken by one of the numerous persons
employed as devisers or trainers. I do not know that the
statement that ' Ben Jonson turned the globe of the earth
standing behind the altar * in Hymeyiaei necessarily implies
Jonson’s personal presence on the stage, actor though he had
been, for in fact the globe seems to have been moved by
unseen machinery, without even the apparent assistance of
a presenter. But the dance-masters Thomas Giles and
Jerome Heron certainly played the Cyclopes in the Hadding-
ton Mask, and Giles also played Thamesis in the Mask of
Beauty, The musicians again, some or all of whom were
generally disguised^ were a professional body, of which the
nucleus was probably formed by members of the various
bands of the royal households. Thus John Allen, who sang
in the Mask of Queens and the Mask of Squires, was ‘ her
majesty’s servant *, and Nicholas Lanier, who also sang in
the Mask of Squires, was one of the King’s flutes. Both
musicians and dancing-masters had other important functions
in connexion with the masks, outside the actual performances.
The former had to compose the airs and set them for the
musical instruments and the dances ; the latter had to
arrange the dances and to drill the dancers.^ Campion, being
a composer as well as a poet, was naturally responsible for
his own music, and the musical element in his masks tended
to be predominant. Jonson seems generally to have obtained
the co-operation of Alfonso Ferrabosco, probably a son of
the Ferrabosco who was devising masks for Elizabeth about
1572.® He was originally a lutenist, but at the time of his
death in 1627 ‘ enjoyed four places, viz. a musician’s place in
general, a composer’s place, a violl’s place, and an instructor’s
place to the prince in the art of musique Amongst the
musicians who gave minor assistance, either as composers or

* Dekker His Dream (i(>20, , Works, lii. 7). ' I herein imitate the most
courtly revellings ; for if Lx)rds be in the grand masque, in the antimasque
are players ' ; Jonson, Love Restored (Works, lii. 83). ‘ The rogue play-boy,
that acts Cupid, is got so hoarse, your majesty cannot hear him half the
breadth of your chair *. The accounts for Oberon include ;^io to ' xiij® Holt
boyes ' and £1$ to * players imployed in the maske ' ; those for Love
Freed £10 to ‘ 5 boyes, that is 3 Graces Sphynx and Cupid *, and £12 to
‘the 12 fooles that danced and those for the Lords' Mask £i each to
‘ 12 madfolkes * and ' 5 speakers ' (Reyher, 508).

* The rehearsals were a serious business, lasting in 1616 no less than
fifty days ; cf. Reyher, 35. There were dress rehearsals ; cf Osborne
in note to p. 206. infra.

® Cf. p. 163, and Z). N, B., s.v. Ferrabosco.

* Lafontaine, 63.

202

THE COURT

as executants, were Thomas Ford {Chapman's Mask)^ John
Cooper {Lords ; Squires)^ the lutenists Robert Johnson
{Oberon ; Love Freed ; Lords ; Chapman's Mask)^ John and
Robert Dowland {Chapman' s Mask)^ and Philip Rossiter
{Chapman' s Mask)^ and the violinists Thomas Lupo the elder
{Hay Mask ; Oberon ; Love Freed ; Lords) ^ Rowland Rubidge
{Oberon)^ and Alexander Chisan {Oberon)} As dancing-
masters we hear of Thomas Cardell under Elizabeth in 1582 ; *
and under James of Jerome Heron {Haddington Mask ;
Queens ; Oberon ; Lords), Confess {Oberon ; Love Freed),
Bochan {Love Freed ; Lords), and Thomas Giles {Hymenaei ;
Beauty ; Haddington Mask ; Queens ; Oberon ; Lords), who
was musician and teacher of the dance to Henry, and may
be identical with the Thomas Giles who became Master of
the Paul’s boys in 1584.^

The court masks ordinarily took place in what was called
the banqueting-house, but might with more appropriateness
have been called the masking-house, at Whitehall.^ The
occasional exceptions readily explain themselves. Whitehall
was under the ban of plague in the winter of 1603-4, and the
masks were in the great hall of Hampton Court. During
the winter of 1606, when the Elizabethan banqueting-house
had been pulled down and the Jacobean one was not yet
ready, the great hall of Whitehall itself was used. Here also
was given Chapman' s Mask, on the second night of the
Princess Elizabeth’s wedding, doubtless because the ban-
queting-house was still encumbered with the scenery belonging
to the Lords' Mask of the previous night. The hall had also
been assigned to Beaumont' s Mask on the third night, but
when this was put off for a few days, the greater dignity of
the banqueting-house was granted as a compensation for the
disappointment of the dancers. The aspect of the room and
its arrangements are well described in 1618, only a year
before the first Jacobean banqueting-house was burnt down,
by Orazio Busino, almoner to the Venetian ambassador, Piero
ContariniA This may be supplemented by Campion’s descrip*

* Reyher, 79. * Feuillerat, Eliz. 356. ^ Keyher, 78.

^ Blackness certainly and Hymenaei probably were in the Elizabethan
room. The Jacobean room was first used for Beauty (10 Jan. 1608). It
was also used for Queens, Oberon, Lords, Beaumont' s. Squires, and Flowers,
and probably for all others from 1608 to 1616 except Chapman's.

* Busino, Anglopotrida (V. P. xv. no), describing Jonson's Pleasure
Reconciled to Virtue on 6 Jan. 1618, ‘ A large hall is fitted up like a theatre,
with well secured boxes all round. The stage is at one end and his Majesty's
chair in front under an ample canopy. Near him are stools for the foreign
ambassadors. . . . Whilst waiting for the king we amused ourselves admiring
the decorations and beauty of the house with its two orders of columns.

THE MASK

203

tion of the great hall at Whitehall as arranged for the mask
at Lord Hay^s wedding, and by the careful note of John
Finett, then an assistant to the Master of the Ceremonies,
upon the seating of the ambassadors in 1616.^ At the lower
or screen end was the scene ; at the upper end, and divided
from the scene by the dancing- place, was the royal ‘ state \
on a raised dais and under a canopy. Behind the state,
along the sides of the room to right and left of the dancing-
place, and in galleries above, were tiers of seats, some of
which were divided into boxes. James himself seems always
to have been present, returning if necessary from his hunting
journeys for mask nights, and sometimes starting off again
the next morning at daybreak. Busino’s account suggests
that he liked to see vigorous and sustained dancing ; but his
patience failed him when he was asked to sit through three
masks on successive nights in 1613, and he insisted on putting
off the third, although the maskers had already come, telling
Sir Francis Bacon, who protested that this was to bury them
quick, that the alternative was to bury him quick, for he could
last no longer. On the other hand, he was sufficiently gratified
by the Irish Mask in 1613 and Mercury Vindicated in 1615
to be willing to call for a second performance in each case.
With the King sat members of the royal family and some-
times ambassadors or other specially honoured guests. Finett
records that in 1616 the French, Venetian, and Savoyard
ambassadors were all on the King’s right hand, but in places

one above the other, their distance from the wall equalling the breadth
of the passage, that of the second row being upheld by Done pillars,
while above these rise Ionic columns supporting the roof. The whole is
of wood, including even the shafts, which are carved and gilt with much
skill. From the roof of these hang festoons and angels in relief with two
rows of lights. Then such a concourse as there was, for although they
profess only to admit the favoured ones who are invited, yet every box
was filled notably with most noble and richly arrayed ladies, in number
some 600 and more according to the general estimate ; ... On entering
the house, the comets and trumpets to the number of fifteen or twenty
began to play very well a sort of recitative, and then after his Majesty
had seated himself under the canopy alone, the queen not being present
oa account of a slight indisposition, he caused the ambassadors to sit
below him on two stools, while the great officers of the crown and courts
of law sat upon benches. The Lord Chamberlain then had the way cleared
and in the middle of the theatre there appeared a fine and spacious area
carpeted’all over with green cloth. In an instant a large curtain dropped,
painted to represent a tent of gold cloth with a broad fringe ; the back-
ground was of canvas painted blue, powdered all over with golden stars.
This became the front arch of the stage.'

‘ Finett, 3a. The plan from Lansd. 1171 in Reyher, 346, dates from
1635 and represents the great Hall arranged not for a mask but for a
pastoral ; but the general scheme was probably much the same.

204

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of nicely graded dignity, ‘ not right out, but by as forward
The ambassadorial suites appear to have been accommodated
in boxes raised above the level of the state, to the right and
left. Guests of honour, but of lesser honour, might be placed
on special benches assigned to lords and privy councillors.
Evidently the masks were solemn occasions, and the laws of
precedence strictly followed. An allusion in The Maid's
Tragedy suggests that ladies, other than those ladies of the
court and ambassadors* wives who formed the king’s ‘ troop ’,
were ordinarily seated in the galleries.^ One of the principal
objects of the masks was the entertainment of ambassadors,
and the jealousies amongst them were constantly involving
James and his Council in awkward diplomatic questions.^
These have recently been the subject of a special study, and
need not here be described in detail.® By far the most impor-
tant was the standing conflict for precedence between the
representatives of France and Spain. James consistently
refused to commit himself to either claim, and was careful
not to invite both ambassadors to the same function.^ But
some occasions were more honourable than others, and it
seems clear that in the minds of the ambassadors themselves
the bestowal or withholding of an invitation often counted
for a diplomatic triumph or rebuff. Matters were complicated
during the earlier years of the reign by Anne’s far from
discreet advocacy of the Spanish cause, and the dispatches
of M. de Beaumont in 1605 and M. de la Boderie in 1608
are largely occupied with the embarrassment caused to James
and the humiliation inflicted upon those ambassadors them-
selves by the Queen’s determination that her masks should
be graced by the presence of the astute and courtly Spaniard,
Juan de Taxis. In the latter year James had to stave off
an open rupture with Henri IV by an opportune demand
for the repayment of a long-standing debt. The relations
between France and Spain were paralleled by similar feuds
for precedence between Venice and Flanders and between
Florence and Savoy, while the King of Spain was naturally
unwilling that his representative should be received on terms
of equality with the representative of Holland and thus
appear to acknowledge the claims of rebellious provinces to

* Maid's Tragedy, i. 2. 32.

* Birch, i. 24 (27 Nov. 1603), * many plays and shows are bespoken, to
give entertainment to our ambassadors ’.

® Sullivan, Court Masques of James I ; cf. my notes on the individual
masks in ch. xxiii.

* De Silva's dispatches of 1564-6 (cf. p. 26) show that a precisely
similar situation had established itself at Elizabeth’s court.

THE MASK

205

rank as a sovereign state. Occasional visitors of rank had
their own points of etiquette to raise. Thus in 1604 the
Duke of Holstein stood for three hours rather than sit below
the Venetian ambassador. Generally speaking, indeed, the
newly established office of Master of the Ceremonies must
have been anything but a bed of roses. The chief mask of
the year, which every ambassador intrigued to attend, was
traditionally danced on Twelfth Night ; but often it was put
off to a later date, in order to meet diplomatic exigencies.^

The banqueting-house, with the ‘ state ’ in it, was probably
regarded as technically part of the Presence Chamber. At
any rate, it was under the supervision of the Lord Chamber-
lain and the officers of the Chamber, headed by the Gentle-
man Usher. They seated the audience, kept the doors against
the turbulent crowds knocking for admission, cleared the
dancing-place when the King was seated, and supplied the
principal guests with programmes or abstracts of the device
prepared by the poet.^ The Chamberlain’s white staff was
no mere symbol when there was whiffling to be done, and
even Ben Jonson, ‘ ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a mask ’
on 6 January 1604, the year before his own sovereignty over
masks began, required to be consoled by his fellow in mis-
fortune, Sir John Roe, with the reminder, —

Forget we were thrust out ; it is but thus,

God threatens Kings, Kings Lords, as Lords do us.®

Obviously, as John Chamberlain suggests in a letter to Dudley
Carleton, to be befriended at court was to secure the easier
admission. But subject to the limitations of space and the
discretion of the door-keepers, the performances seem to have
been open to all comers, although the wicked wit of the
dramatists is apt to suggest that citizens’ wives sometimes

‘ Beaumont in B. M. Kings MS. cxxiv, f. 328, ‘ le . . . ballet . . . de la
Reine qui se devoit danser au vendredy dernier jour des festes de Noel
selon la fa9on d'Angleterre et le plus honnorable pour la ceremonie
qui s’y obserue de tout temps publiquement ' ; Fmett, 6, ' il se pourroit
soustenir que le dernier jour seroit a prendre p>our le plus gran jour comm’il
s’entend en plusiours autres cas, et nommement aiix festes de Noel, que le
Jour des Roys qui est le dernier se prend pour le plus gran jour The
chief masks of 1606-7, 1611-12, 1613-14, and 1614-16, were on 6 Jan.
In 1603-4, 1607-8, and 1608-9, the Queen’s masks were planned for that
day, but put off. In 1605-6 and 1609-10 the day was given to barriers.

* Cf. p. 39. The accounts for the Lords’ Mask include fees of £1 each
to three Grooms of the Chamber ; those of Chapman’s Mask, given excep-
tionally in the great Hall, £i to the Ushers of the Hall. The manusenpt of
the Mash of Blackness appears to be an abstract for use at the performance.
In 1613 a Groom of the Chamber was also paid £y for 42 nights watching
in the banqueting-house while workmen were there (Chamber Accounts).

® Donne, Poems (ed. Grierson), i. 414 ; cf. Jonson, Conversations, 10.

2o6

THE COURT

found access more readily than the citizens themselves.^ It
is difficult to say how many the room would hold. One of
De la Boderie’s dispatches speaks of 10,000, which was probably
a considerable over-estimate.^ Many of those who besieged
the doors must of course have been disappointed, and perhaps
many of those who got in experienced more satisfaction than
comfort.^ In order to save space, it was decreed in 1613 that
no ladies should be admitted in farthingales, and the repeti-
tion of the Irish Mask of 1613 and the Mercury Vindicated
of 1615 may have been due in part to an unsatisfied demand
for seats as well as to the intrinsic merit of the performances.

The mask, beginning after supper, was prolonged far into
the night. That at Sir Philip Herbert’s wedding lasted three
hours ; Tethys' Festival was not over until hard upon sunrise.
The pent-up audience dissolved in some confusion. Appa-
rently the Tudor custom of finishing the proceedings by
rifling the pageant and the dresses of their decorations had
not been wholly abandoned.^ A hardly less riotous scene
followed. A banquet was spread in another room, the great
chamber in 1605, the presence chamber in 1616, the specially

‘ Four Plays in One, 2, * Down with those City-Gentlemen, &c. Out

with those I say, and in with their wives at the back door ’ ; Love

Restored, * By this time I saw a fine citizen's wife or two let in ; and that
figure provoked me exceedingly to take it Here Robin Goodfellow is
recounting his various attempts to secure admission, as an engineer,
a tirewoman, a musician, a feather-maker of Blackfriars and the like.
Carleton wrote of the mask on 27 Dec. 1604 (S. P. Dom. Jac. I, xii. 6),
• One woeman among the rest lost her honesty for which she was caried
to the porters lodge being surprised at her bzissnes on the top of the taras

* Amhassades, hi. 13.

^ Osborne, James, 75, * So disobliging were the most grateful pleasures
of the Court ; whose masks and other spectacles, though they wholly
intenued them for show, and would not have been pleased without great
store of company, yet did not spare to affront such as come to see them ;
which accuseth the King no less of folly, in being at so vast an expense for
that which signified nothing but in relation to pride and lust, than the
spectators (I mean such as were not invited) of madness, who did not
only give themselves the discomposure of body attending such irregular
hours, but to others an opportunity to abuse them. Nor could I, that
had none of their share who passed through the most incommodious
access, count myself any great gainer (who did ever find some time before
the grand night to view the scene) after I had reckoned my attendance
and sleep ; there appeanng little observable besides the company, and
what Imagination might conjecture from the placing of the Ladies and
the immense charge and universal vanity in clothes, &c.'

^ Jonson, Mask of Blackness, 7, ‘ Little had been done to the study of
magnificence in these, if presently with the rage of the people, who (as
a part of greatness) are privileged by custom to deface their carcases, the
spirits had also perished'; cf. Halle, i. 27, 117. At Tethys* Festival
the Duke of York and six young noblemen led off the maskers * to avoid
the confusion which usually attendeth the desol ve of these shewes

THE MASK

207

built ‘ marriage ’ room in 1613. It was nqt etiquette for the
King to partake of this with his guests, but he usually con-
ducted the maskers to the tables, and took a survey of them
before he retired. Then the fray began. The banquet was
‘ dispatched with the accustomed confusion *, says a chronicler
in 1604. In ibo5 it ‘ was so furiously assaulted that down
went tables and tressels before one bit was touched \ Tethys*
Festival in 1610 closed with ‘ views and scrambling *. At
Beaumont’s mask in 1613, ‘ after the King had made the tour
of the tables, everything was in a moment rapaciously swept
away Tired and unfed, the ladies made their way out
into the courtyards of the palace, perhaps to find, as in 1604,
that chains and jewels were gone, and that they were even
‘ made shorter by the skirts

Next day the poets sat down to turn the programmes into
books, which the stationers could print and sell at sixpence
each, and so save them from being pestered for copies of the
verses.* And the Lord Chamberlain’s Secretary sat down to
compare his expenses with his imprests, and to draw up his
accounts for endorsement by his lord and the Master of the
Horse, and presentation at the Exchequer. Any estimate of
the cost of masking that we can now form must be approxi-
mate in character. Under Elizabeth, so long as masks were
the care of the Revels, their expenses naturally appear in the
accounts of that office ; but in part only, since requisitions
appear to have been made upon the Wardrobe and the Office
of Works, and the services rendered by these departments not
charged to the Revels. Moreover, the methods of bookkeeping
employed by the officers of the Revels did not provide for
distinguishing expenditure upon masks and upon plays when,
as was usually the case, both types of entertainment were in
concurrent preparation.^ It is therefore rarely that the cost
of an Elizabethan mask can be isolated, and still more rarely
that it can be assumed to be complete. Four masks in the
winter of 1559 only cost the Revels £127 115. zi., and it was
estimated that two more at Shrovetide would cost another
£100. The spectacular mask in June 1572 cost £506 115. 8i.,
but it is noted that the ‘ Warderobe stuf ’ was ‘ excepted ’

‘ Cf. ch. xxiii ; also Busino in V. P. xv. 1 14.

* Winwood, ii. 43.

* On 2. Feb. 1604, the Earl of Worcester wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury
of The Twelve Goddeses (Lodge, iii. 87), * I have been at sixpence charge
with you to send you the book He adds that the books of another
ballet were ' all called in '. After the Mask of Beauty Lord Lisle wrote to
Shrewsbury (Lodge, App. 102) that he could not get the verses, because
Jonson was busy writing more for the Haddington wedding.

« Cf. ch. iii.

2o8 THE COURT

from the reckoning. An estimate for another spectacular
mask in April 1581 amounts to about £380, and again it is
clear that the materials for garments are not included. It
is rather surprising to find that a mask intended to accompany
the embassy to Scotland at the time of James VPs wedding
cost no more than £17 105. loi., but this was a simple mask
without a pageant, and garments already in store were
* translated * for the purpose.^ Nor did Elizabeth desire to
do any excessive honour to her cousin. On the other hand,
the accounts, and particularly the inventories attached to
those for the earliest years of the reign, show that the richest
materials were used without stint to deck out the maskers.
Clothes of gold and silver, shot with innumerable hues and
often further enriched with embroidered * works \ velvets and
sarcenets, satins, taffetas, and damasks ; all recur in a truly
royal profusion, and at a cost of anything up to a guinea or
so a yard. The cheaper stuffs were no doubt used for torch-
bearers, and there was room for economy in the Cologne and
Venice gold and silver and other forms of tinsel that served
for fringes and trimmings.^ Copper lace, as the Duke of
Newcastle gravely informed Charles II at the Restoration,
looked as well as gold for the two or three nights before it
tarnished : ‘ All Queen Elizabethes dayes shee had itt, &

Kinge James.’ ® Burghley’s reorganization of the Revels in
1597 apparently left the office without any responsibility for
the preparation of masks, and it is not clear what arrange-
ments were made for these during the last few years of the
reign. Under James the Revels claimed fees for the personal
attendance of the officers at masks, for the lighting of the
banqueting-house, for small repairs to its fittings, and for
no more.^ Small sums also appear in the accounts of the
Treasurer of the Chamber for services of the mat-layer in
making ready the dancing-floor, and of Grooms of the Chamber
in attendance on the maskers, and in those of the Office of
Works for the erection of stages and scaffolds. The incidence
of the main expenditure of course depended upon whether

* Feuillerat, Eliz. no, 153, 168, 345. 392.

* Feuillerat, Eliz. 18, 112, et passim.

3 Newcastle, On Government (S. A. Strong, Cat. of Documents at Welheck,
223). The direct reference is to tilts, but an earlier passage runs, ‘ Well
S' Then your Ma**« is well returned to White-Halle & ther prepare a maske
for twelve-tyde, — Etaliens makes the Seanes beste, — & all butt your Ma**®
maye have their Glorius Atier off Coper which will doe as well for two or
three nightes as Silver or Golde & much less charge, which otherwise
will bee much founde falte withall by those thatt attendes your Ma‘*® in
the maske '.

® Cunningham, 203--17 ; cf. ch. iii.

THE MASK

209

the mask was ordered by James himself, or contributed out
of the loyalty of others. James appears to have paid, in
whole or in part, for at least fourteen of the twenty-five court
masks traceable during the years 1603-16. These include the
six Queen’s masks (T welve Goddesses, Blackness, Beauty,
Queens, Tethys' Festival, Love Freed), two Prince’s masks
[Oberon, Love Restored), and five other masks by lords and
gentlemen, one at the first Christmas of the reign {Indian
and Chinese Knights), one at his daughter’s wedding {Lords),
one at Somerset’s {Squires), and two of later date {Mercury
Vindicated, Golden Age Restored). He may also have paid
for the Mask of Scots in 1604 and the Irish Mask in 1613,
but these were probably non-spectacular and cheap. As to
the finance of the Winchester mask of 1603 and of the Twelve
Months nothing is known, or whether the latter, evidently
planned for a Prince’s mask, was ever in fact performed.
To Oberon and Love Restored James contributed amounts of
at least £387 and at least £280 respectively, but so far as
Oberon is concerned this was by no means the whole cost,
for a sum of £1,076 6s. lod. was charged to Henry’s personal
account, and it is probable that the burden of Love Restored
was similarly divided. I have no evidence that Anne’s per-
sonal account was ever charged with any part of the cost of
the Queen’s masks. Certainly it was not so with Love Freed
in 1611, for of this mask, and of this alone, a full balance-
sheet happens to be available. It was a comparatively cheap
mask, deliberately so, because Tethys' Festival in the summer
before had been ‘ excessively costly ’. It was intended that it
should cost no more than £600. In fact the total expenditure
came to £719 is. 3^. Of this £238 i6^. lod. went to Inigo
Jones on ‘ his byll ’, doubtless for the scenery ; £69 175. $d. in
minor items of costume ; £292 in ‘ rewards making a total
of £600 145. 3d., of which £400 had already been received
from the Exchequer. This agrees closely with the original
estimate, but there was a further amount of £118 js. due
to the Master of the Wardrobe for materials which he had
supplied for costumes, and the document concludes with a
memorandum signed by the Earls of Suffolk and Worcester to
the effect that this amount, over and above the £600 14s. 3d.,
is payable. These lords, one as Lord Chamberlain, the other
as Master of the Horse, seem regularly to have had the
supervision of ‘ emptions and provisions for masks given at
the royal expense.^ The financial procedure was as follows.
At an early date, the King directed a warrant under the privy

‘ They certainly supervised Queens, Tethys* Festival, Love Freed, Lords*
Mask,

22291 p

210

THE COURT

seal to the Exchequer, in which the names of the supervising
officers were set out, and the Treasurer was authorized to
make payments upon certificates by them.^ A letter of 1608
suggests that up to that date it had been usual to name
a maximum cost in the warrant, but thenceforward the super-
vising officers seem normally to have had a free hand.^ Their
own methods varied. Sometimes they asked the Exchequer,
as occasion arose, to pay small sums direct to Inigo Jones
and others ; sometimes they wrote acknowledgements on the
bills of furnishers, and sent these forward for Exchequer
payment ; sometimes they authorized a subordinate officer
to draw one or two large sums and meet the expenditure out
of these. For ‘ rewards * no doubt the last was the more
convenient way. We find one Bethell, a gentleman usher of
the chamber, thus designated as payee in 1608, Henry
Reynolds in 1609, Meredith Morgan in 1612, 1613, 1614, and
1616, Walter James in 1615, and Edmund Sadler in 1616.^
The balance-sheet for Love Freed^ although it contains items
for the dresses of the presenters, antimaskers, and musicians,
contains none which can be assigned to those of the main
maskers, and there is other evidence for thinking that, even
in a royal mask, the lords or ladies who danced were expected
to dress themselves. Thus John Chamberlain tells us of the
Mask of Squires that the King was to bear the charge, * all
saving the apparel *. The practice, however, was probably
not invariable, for the Exchequer documents relating to
Tethys' Festival contain a silkman’s bill for lace used for the
dresses of fourteen ladies. For the Twelve Goddesses warrants
were issued to Lady Suffolk and Lady Walsingham to take
Queen Elizabeth’s robes from the wardrobe in the Tower.
The list of ‘ rewards ’ for Love Freed can be supplemented
from similar lists for Oberon and the Lords^ Mask and a few
scattered records. The largest amounts went to the poets
and the architect. Jones had £50 for the Lords' Mask and
£40 each for Love Freed and Oberon^ Jonson £40 for Love
Freed, Daniel £20 for Tethys' Festival, Campion, being both
poet and musician, £66 135. ^d, for the Lords' Mask. Dancers
and composers got from £10 to £40 ; lutenists and violinists
£i or £2 ; players £i each. For the total cost we are mainly
reduced to guess-work, although contemporary gossip, some-

* The privy seal of i Dec, 1608 for Queens is in 5 . P. D, Jac. /, xxxviii. r,
and that of 7 Jan. 1613 for the Lords* Mask in Collier, i. 364 ; a certifi-
cate of 25 May 1610 for Tethys* Festival is printed by Sullivan, 219, from
S. P. D. Jac. I, liv. 74.

* Sullivan, 201, misdated 27 Nov. 1607 for 1608, from S. P. D. Jac. I,
XXX vii. 96. The mask was Queens.

® Reyher, 508, 520 ; cf. ch. xxiii.

THE MASK

211

times a little disturbed at the extravagance, may help us, if
it was not itself based on guess-work.^ We hear of £2,000 to
£3,000 for the Twelve Goddesses and the two other masks of
the first winter, £3,000 and 25,000 scudi for Blackness, 6,000
or 7,000 and later 30,000 scudi for BeatUy, £1,500 for Mercury
Vindicated, £2,000 for Queens, which, however, M. Reyher
estimates from Exchequer documents which he does not
print, at more than £4,000.* These figures probably include
the contributions of the Wardrobe, as these were to be repaid
out of the special allowances in 1611. There is yet one other
source of information. A return of extraordinary disburse-
ments of the Exchequer for 1603-^, during which period there
were six or seven royal masks, gives £4,215 under this head,
and a similar return for 1603-17, during which there were
from fourteen to sixteen, including the Vision of Delight in
^617, gives £7,500.* But this last figure is specifically stated
not to include ‘ the provisions had out of the Warderobe and
materials and workmen from the Office of the Works ’. At
a venture, I should say that a royal mask cost about £2,000
on the average. Something may also be gleaned about the
finance of those masks that were not wholly charged on the
Exchequer. Oberon, to which both James and Henry con-
tributed, was supervised by the chamberlain of Henry’s
household. Sir Thomas Chaloner. The Inns of Court masks
brought to the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding were paid for
out of admission fees to chambers and levies raised upon the
members of the Inns, according to their status. Chamberlain
estimated the cost of the two masks as ‘ better than £4,000 *,
and the accounts that have been preserved show that in fact
Chapman’s mask cost Lincoln’s Inn and the Middle Temple
£1,086 85. lid, each, and Beaumont’s cost Gray’s Inn and
the Inner Temple over £1,200 each. On the other hand, the
whole cost of the Mask of Flowers, given by Gray’s Inn at
the Earl of Somerset’s wedding, being over £2,000, was met
by Sir Francis Bacon, who refused an offered contribution of
£500 from Sir Henry Yelverton. The masks at the weddings
of Sir Philip Herbert, Lord Essex, Lord Hay, and Lord
Haddington were all, certainly or probably, complimentary
offerings of friends of the hymeneal couples. Lady Rutland,
who danced in Hymenaei, paid £80 to Bethell, and £26 115.

* W. ffarington writerf^ on 7 Feb. 1609 (Chetham Soc. xxxix. 151),
* The Comonalty do somewhat murmur at such vaine expenses and thinke
that that money worth bestowed other waies might have been conferred
upon better use, but quod supra nos, nikU ad nos *. • Reyher, 72.

» Collier, i. 349 : Abstract, 13. The Lords' Mask is separately reckoned
at This was Just about the amount of the ‘ rewards ’.

212

THE COURT

more for her own apparel. The Haddington Mask cost each
of the twelve dancers £300, and must therefore have been
one of the most expensive masks of the period. Obviously
the highest estimates for the masks do not include the value
of the jewels with which the dancers bedizened themselves.
In the Twelve Goddesses Anne is said to have worn £100,000
worth and the other ladies £20,000 worth. Of Hymenaei John
Pory says, ‘ I think they hired and borrowed all the principall
jewels and ropes of perle both in court and citty. The
Spanish ambassador seemed but poore to the meanest of
them.’ Even this Chamberlain could cap for Beauty. ‘ One
lady, and that under a baroness, is said to be furnished for
better than a hundred thousand pounds. And the Lady
Arabella goes beyond her ; and the queen must not come
behind.’ Thus they revelled it.

VII

THE COURT PLAY

{Bibliographical Note . — The books cited at the head of ch. iii, with
F. S. Boas, University Drama tn the Tudor Age (1914), provide material for
this chapter : cf. A. Thaler, The Players at Court (1920, J. G. P. xix. 19).]

The foregoing chapters have illustrated the overflow of
the Renaissance passion for drama, taking shape in the
spectacular enrichment of elements in court life which were
not originally mimetic in their intention ; the welcome,
the exercise of arms, the dance. They are subordinate in
their interest to us, as they were in fact subordinate by
reason of their occasional character to the play itself, which
formed, both in Elizabeth’s reign and in that of James, the
staple amusement of the court winter. The ordinary season
for plays was a comparatively restricted one. Traditionally
it began with All Saints, but Elizabeth at least rarely reached
her winter quarters by the beginning of November, and her
revels began with the Christmas festival itself, the twelve
days of ancient licence in Calends and Saturnalia that
extended from Nativity to Epiphany,^ Within this period
the three feasts of St. Stephen, St. John, and the Innocents,
with New Year’s Day and Twelfth Night, were nearly always
gladdened by play or mask. Sometimes one of them was
omitted, and sometimes, in substitution or addition, another
day, often the Sunday in Christmas week, was selected.

I know no record of a play on Christmas Day itself. Cham-
berlain writes in January 1608, * The king was very earnest
to have one on Christmas night, though, as I take it, he and
the prince received that day, but the Lords told him it was
not the fashion. Which answer pleased him not a whit, but
said, “What do you tell me of the fashion? 1 will make it
a fashion.” * ^ But the Chamber accounts show that he
dropped the point. After Twelfth Night there was a lull,
broken perhaps by an occasional play, notably on February 2
at Candlemas, until a group of two or three at Shrovetide
brought revelling to a conclusion before the rigours of Lent.
This was the close of the official season, and the Revels
office had now little to think of but the annual airing of the
wardrobe stuff, at any rate until the progress came round

* On the earlier custom cf. S. Cox (App. C, No. xliv). Buggin's
memorandum on the Revels in 1573 (Tudor Revels, 36) contemplates the,
possibility of service at ‘ Hollantide * Birch, i. 69.

THE COURT

ai4

The longest number of plays given before Elizabeth in any
one winter was probably in i6oo~i, when there were eleven.
During the greater part of the reign the number ranged from
six to ten. For some of the earliest years only two or three
are on record. It is possible that a few may have escaped
notice owing to the absence of a ‘ reward or conceivably
the charge of a reward to funds other than those covered
by the very complete accounts of the Treasurer of the Cham*
ber.^ Naturally, if an Inn of Court or gentlemen such as the
sons of Sir Percival Hart played, they did not take a money
payment. The schoolboys of Eton and Westminster did,
but the latter perhaps not from the very beginning. The
only winter for which the Treasurer of the Chamber records
no rewards is that of the plague year 1563-4. But the
Revels Office provided for three plays at Windsor, and if it
was thought dangerous to bring companies from London or
elsewhere to court, Eton or the Windsor choir would have
been the natural substitutes. In 1574 again the Revels
Office were furnishing plays at Windsor and Reading by
Italians, no payments to whom can be traced. Elizabeth
occasionally ordered a mask outside the winter season, for
some such purpose as the entertainment of an ambassador.
I do not find clear evidence that she ever ordered a play.
But, both in winter and in summer, she was from time to
time present at a play given by some one else, in progress or
at a wedding or banquet in London.^

* Cf. App. B. The Revels Accounts record plays which the Treasurer
of the Chamber did not reward, by the Chapel (1559-60) ; by unnamed
companies (3 plays) at Windsor (1563-4) ; by Westminster (Miles Glorio-
sus ; cf. Murray, ii. 168), the Chapel, Sir Percival Hart's sons, and * showes *
by Gray's Inn (1564-5) ; by an unnamed company (1567-S) ; by an
unnamed company (1581-2) ; and by Gray's Inn (Misfortunes of Arthur,
1587-8). For years. not covered by these accounts must be added the
Inner Temple Gorboduc (1562), probably their Gismond of Salerne (1566 ?),
and not impossibly others by Gray's Inn, who, according to Elizab^h in
1595 (Gesta Grayorum, 68), * did always study for Sports to present unto
her '. I cannot understand Collier's unreferenced notice of a payment to
men of George Evelyn (cf. ch. xiii) for a play in 1 588. A letter of 4 Dec.
1592 from the University of Cambridge (M. S. C. i. 198, from Lansd. MS,
71), deprecating an invitation to play an English comedy at court, shows
that a similar suggestion had been made to Oxford ; there is no evidence
that either University actually played. It is conceivable that plays may
sometimes have been rewarded out of the Privy Purse (cf. ch. ii) instead
of by the Treasurer of the Chamber.

* Cf. Calendar, s.a. 1559 (7 Aug., Paul's at Nonsuch), 1564 (5 July, play
at Mr. Sackville's), 1567 (April 13, play before Elizabeth and Spanish
ambassador), 1575 (plays on progress at Lichfield by Warwick's, at Kenil-
worth, and at Woodstock), 1578 (Aug., Ipswich play at Stowmarket),
1579 (play at Osterley), 1595 (Jan.« probable performance of M, N, D. at
Derby's wedding), 1601 (Aug., ' pla3ring-wenches ' at Caversham), i6oi
(29 Dec., play at Hunsdon's in Blackfhars). There are also, of course,

THE COURT PLAY

215

James gave the impression, when he first came to England,
of taking, unlike Queen Anne and Prince Henry, ‘ no extra-
ordinary pleasure * in plays.^ But he had a great many more
than his predecessor, and reverted in some years to the early
practice of opening the play season at the beginning of
November. Nor, on the other hand, was he strict in his
observance of Lent, and in some years the performances
continued at intervals until after Easter. During his first
winter he saw eleven plays and gradually increased this
number, reaching a maximum of twenty-three in 1609-10.
Up to 1615 he never saw less than eleven, except during
1612-13, the winter of Henry’s death, when the number
fell to seven. Moreover, even when he himself escaped to
a hunting-box, he was liberal in ordering additional plays
for the prince and court, and yet others seem to have been
charged to the private funds of Anne and the royal children.^
The records do not in all years give the dates of individual
performances ; but in 1611-12, to take one example, the
programme was as follows. The King himself was present
at plays on October 31, November i, and November 5, on
the four nights after Christmas, on January 5, on Candlemas,
and on Shrove Sunday and Tuesday. On January 6 was the
mask. Most of the intervening days he spent in visits to his
various hunting quarters. Meanwhile there were at least
twenty-six other plays before one or more of the royal children,
at which Anne was probably also present. Two of these were
in November, one m the middle of December, one in Christmas
week, eight in January after Twelfth night, and nine in
February, both before and after Lent had begun. Two plays
at the end of March and three in April, none of these in the
King’s presence, exhausted the official supply, but not the
enthusiasm of Prince Henry. He spent a fortnight with
Anne at Greenwich during January, and there was * every
night a play some of which the Queen probably paid for ;
and in March he was entertained by the Marquis of Win-
chester at supper, again with plays.^ Occasionally James
ordered a play during the summer ; there were four for the
entertainment of the King of Denmark in 1606, of which one,

the plays at Oxford and Cambridge (cf. ch. iv). For these no money
reward was paid, but the Works and Revels met some of the expenses,
and the actors got a warrant for venison out of Woodstock to make a feast.

» Cf. p. 7.

* Cf. App. B, s.a. 1612--13, 1615-16.

* For other entertainments of the court with plays by private hosts,
cf. Calendar s.a. 1605 {3 Jan., play by Spanish ambassador for Duke of
Holst ; 9 < >14 Jan., Love's Labour's Lost by Southampton or Cranbome
for Anne), 1607 (May 25, Aeneas and Dtdo by Arundel for Prince de
Joinville).

2x6

THE COURT

by the Paul’s boys, is not traceable in the Chamber accounts,
and one for the Duke of Savoy’s ambassador in 1613. All
plays at the Jacobean court was given by professional com-
panies ; if the lawyers came to court, it was not in a play,
but a mask.

Whether the revels were kept at Westminster, Hampton
Court, Greenwich, Richmond, or Windsor, sufficient accom-
modation could be afforded for a play in the great hall, which
thus for a brief space resumed its ancient glories as the
state apartment of the sovereign. At the first three of those
palaces, there is definite evidence of the use of the hall.
But Whitehall, at least, was spacious enough to offer other
alternatives. The banqueting-house might be available, if it
was not occupied by the preparations for a mask. And per-
formances were sometimes given in the ‘ great chamber ’, which
at Whitehall was distinct from both the presence chamber
and the * guard * or ‘ watching ’ chamber which served as an
ante-room to the presence.^ It seems also that provision
could be made, perhaps only on the less public and crowded
occasions when the King was not present, for a stage in the
octagonal cockpit, which stood on the edge of St. James’s Park,
in the western extension of the palace.^ As a courtesy to
a royal visitor, a play was given in 1565 at the Savoy, where
the Lady Cecilia of Sweden was housed, and in 1614 Anne’s
pastoral of Hymen's Triumph took place in ‘ a little square
paved court ’ at Somerset House.

» C£. also M, N. D. iii. 1. 57 ^sle of Gulls, iii (ed. Bullen, p. 67), * in the
great Chamber at the Reuels The Elizabethan Chamber Accounts rarely
show the room; in 1597-8 the hall at Hampton Court, in 1 600-1 the hall
and in 1601-2 the great chamber at Whitehall. I have examined only
a few Jacobean ones on this pomt; the hall, great chamber, and banqueting-
house, at Whitehall, were all used in 1604-5 J ^all, l^nqueting-house,
and cockpit in 1610-11 ; the banqueting-house twice in April 1612-13.

* Cf. App. B, s.a. 1608-12. On the Cockpit cf. Stowe, Survey, ii. 102,
374 ; Sheppard, Whitehall, 66 ; W. J. Lawrence in E. S. xxxv. 279 ;
L. T, R. i. 38 ; li. 23 ; vii. 49, 61 ; Adams, 384. I am not quite clear
where the original pit stood, Stowe puts on the right hand as you go
down Whitehall ‘ diuers fayre Tennis courtes, bowling allies, and a Cocke-
pit, al built by King Henry the eight *. Wyngaerde and Agas'show various
buildings here, of which one in Agas is of pit shape. Faithorne's map of
Westminster (1658), which is said to represent the locality at a much
earlier date, shows, just south of the tilt-yard, a quadrangle divided off
from the road by a low boundary wall, with buildings all round it and
an angled building m the midst. This must I think be the Cockpit, and
some of the buildings round it the lodgings which also bore that name
and were occupied by the Princess Elizabeth before her marriage (Birch,
Charles /. ii. 213) and by Lady Somerset in 1615 (Rutland MSS,
i. 448). Here presumably provision for Cockpit was made for James in
1604 (cf. p. 53), and Hei^" and Elizabeth saw plays in 1608-13 (App. B).
But I doubt whether this is the Cockpit shown in Fisher's Restoration
plan of Whitehall and in an engraving, probably from a seventeenth-

THE COURT PLAY

217

It is a curious illustration of the functions of the Privy
Council as a household board that, during the whole of
Elizabeth’s time and the greater part of that of James, the
actors could not get their fee or ‘ reward *, except through
the medium of a formal warrant addressed by that body to
the Treasurer of the Chamber. These warrants are not in
existence, but their issue is noted, rather irregularly and
inaccurately, in the collection of minutes known as the
Council register, and they are recited, with their dates and
places of signature, and the names of the actors or managers
to whom they appointed payment to be made on behalf of the
companies, in the annual accounts of the Treasurer of the
Chamber as audited and declared before the Exchequer.^
The amount of the reward was, subject to certain historical
developments, a uniform one. It had been fixed, early in the
reign of Henry VIII, at ten marks {£6 13s. 4/f.) a play, and
this rate continued to rule, when Elizabeth came to the
throne, and for some years thereafter. But in 1572 a tendency
to an increase shows itself, and up to 1575 the amounts are
irregular. Sometimes the normal fee is paid, sometimes
a double fee of £13 6s. 8^., sometimes an intermediate one of
£10. The Treasurer of the Chamber records various explana-
tions of the extra sums. They are ‘ a more rcwarde by her
maiesties owne comaundement ’, or they are paid in respect
of special charges incurred by the companies, as for example
when Farrant had to bring his boys from Windsor to White-
hall. And after 1575 things had evidently settled down on
the basis of a normal £10, which was conventionally regarded
as made up of £6 13s. 4^. ‘ for presentinge ' the play, and
£3 6s. Sd. ‘ by way of speciall reward ’. The formulas in the
accounts are not invariably the same, but they all come to
this ; and the shadowy distinction between the two amounts

century drawing, reproduced in L. T. R. ii. 23, and Adams, 407. This
was square externally, and apparently stood farther west than Faithome's
from the line of the tilt-yard, at the extreme north-west angle of the
palace buildings where they jutted into St. James's Park. I think Adams
is clearly right in identifying this building with the little theatre a plan
of which by Inigo Jones was published from a Worcester College MS.
by H. Bell in Architectural Record (1913). 262 (cf. p. 234). Adams further
identifies it with a ‘ new theatre at Whitehall' opened about 1632, no
doubt to replace the old Cockpit. If so, Faithorne is clearly out of date.
This later Cockpit was on the site of the present Treasury buildings, and
the locality long continued to bear its name. Treasury letters were dated
from the Cockpit, and the King's speech is said to have been rehearsed
there as late as 1806. The passage leading from Whitehall to the Treasury
is still called the Cockpit passage. A quite distinct cockpit near Birdcage
Walk is marked by the extant Cockpit Steps. It existed by 1 720 and was
destroyed in 1816. Whether the angled building shown in this direction
by Wyngaerde can represent it, or a predecessor, I do not know.

» Cf. App. B.

2I8

THE COURT

is preserved in the practice by which, if a play was ordered
and then counter-ordered, the £6 135. 4^. was paid, but not
the £3 6 s. 8 d. The £10 rate was maintained, with insignificant
exceptions, during the rest of Elizabeth’s reign, and was
taken over as ‘ the usuall allowaunce ’ or ‘ the ordinary rates
formerly allowed ’ by James.^ If, however, a play was
ordered for the Prince only and not the King, the ‘ speciall
rewarde ’ was omitted, so far as the Treasurer of the Chamber
was concerned, although it is quite possible that the Prince
may have supplied it out of his privy purse.^ A quite excep-
tional amount of £30 was paid to the King’s men for a play
at Wilton in December 1603, to cover their ‘ paynes and
expences ’ in coming from Mortlake to give the performance.
Plague was raging, and they were probably practicing at
Mortlake for the court entertainments of the following
Christmas. It may be added that the King’s company, and
that alone, received a subsidy of £30 from the Treasurer of
the Chamber, in aid of its maintenance during this plague-
winter. Similar payments, of £40 and £30 respectively, were
made after the plague-winters of 1608-9 1609-10.*

In 1614 there was an innovation in the procedure, by which
the responsibility for signing warrants for allowances to
players was transferred from the Privy Council to the Lord
Chamberlain ; and thenceforward the payments are recorded

> There may have been special reasons why the Chapel only got £1$
for two plays in 1583-4, Oxford's £6 13s. ^d. for a play in 1584-5, the
Queen's £20 for three plays in 1587-8, and the Chapel £$ for a ' showe '
in 1600-1. The accounts for 1605-6 seem to point to an unsuccessful
attempt to establish a flat rate of £s for a * rewsirde ' and £s 6s. 8d, for
a ' more rewarde ', for plays before James and Henry alike. The payments
of 17 May 1615 of £43 6s. Sd. for six plays before * his highnes ' (which
in these accounts generally means the Prince) perhaps really represent
one play before James and five before Charles.

* Henry’s accounts for 1610-12 (Cunningham, xiii) include payments
for making ready the Cockpit for plays, and rewards to miisicians and
a juggler, but none for players ; but Elizabeth lost a play in a wager in
1612, and Anne paid foi two plays at Somerset House in 1615. The only
play recorded by the Treasurer of the Chamber as specially before Anne
(10 Dec. 1604) was paid for at £10. Naturally she was present at plays
entered as before the King or Prince, and in 1612 plays paid for at the
King's rate seem in fact to have been shown before Anne and Henry in
his absence (cf. App. B).

* The £10 fee continued to be paid under Charles I, but by 1630-1 the
players had established a claim to an additional £10 ii their service at
court lost them a day at the theatre, owing to a journey to Hampton
Court or Richmond or an occasional performance or rehearsal at Whitehall
in the day-time. During 1636-7, however, the theatres were closed for
plague {M. S. C. i. 391), and the King's men had an allowance of £20
a week to maintain them near the court (S. P. D. Car. /, cccxxxvii. 33),
and did not get the extra £10 sl play ; cf. E. Law, More about Shakespeare
Forgeries, 37. and the extracts from the Lord Chamberlain* s Records in
C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare* s Fellows and Followers (Jahrbuch, xlvi. 92).

THE COURT PLAY

219

in a special section of the Treasurer’s accounts, devoted to
expenditure which the Chamberlain had power to authorize,
and most of which had been at one time charged to the
Privy Purse,^ An example from a later date of a Lord
Chamberlain’s warrant for payment is preserved, together
with a schedule of the plays covered by the amount paid.
The warrant refers to the ‘ acquittance for the receipt * of the
money, which the Treasurer would take from the players,
and is in fact endorsed with receipts by one of them for the
successive instalments paid, and with a final one for the
whole sum due.^ References in the Chamber Accounts for
1605-6 and 1609-10 to similar schedules in or annexed to the
warrants show that, at an earlier date, the Privy Council
had evidence before them, perhaps from the Lord Cham-
berlain, perhaps from the Master of the Revels, as to the
number of plays which a company had given.® It is a pity
that the Treasurer of the Chamber only on rare occasions
thought it worth while to record the name of the play for
which he was paying. A chance memorandum of Henslowe’s
tells us that, as perhaps we might have guessed, some of the
money stuck to the hands of officials in the form of fees.
To get the £10 due to Worcester’s men for a play in 1601-2,
Henslowe had had to give the Clerk of the Council 75. for
‘ geatynge the cownselles handes to ’ the warrant, and
105 . 6rf. ‘ for fese ’ to one Mr. Moysse ‘ at the receuinge of the
mony owt of the payhowsse*.* On the other hand, the
players got their money pretty quickly ; the warrants were
generally signed within a month or so, sometimes within
a day or so, of the performances to which they relate. Con-
siderable delays during the years 1596-9 possibly reflect
the disorganization of the Revels Office by the disputes of
the officers ; just as similar delays about 1615-17 probably
reflect the general disorganization of Jacobean finance.

Plays were given in private houses, as well as at court, and

* Cf. ch. ii, p. 66.

* The documents are printed by Cunningham, xxiv, and by Law, More,
39* 71. who gives the warrant more fully. They were removed by Cunning-
ham from the Audit Ofl&ce, and when returned to the Record Office were
classed in error as papers subsidiary to the Revels Accounts, instead of
to those of the Treasurer of the Chamber. But Law, More, 61, successfully
vindicates their authenticity, and 1 may add that the dockets of Chamber-
lain's warrants for other years (Jahrbtich, xlvi. 94) refer to schedules now
lost, and that a schedule of the plays of the King’s men for 1638-9 was
facsimiled from a private manuscript by G. R. Wright in Brit. Arch. Ass.
Journal, xvi. 275, 344 (i860), and in his Archaeologic and Historic Frag-
ments (1887). In this the claims for ‘ our day lost ' are clearly specified.

* ‘The schedule attached to a warrant of 1633 (Jahrbuch. xlvi. 97) appears
to have been a bill signed by the Master of the Revels.

^ Greg, Henslowe Papers, 109 ; but his note is a slip.

220

THE COURT

not only when there was a royal guest to be entertained.
As the public theatres were open by daylight, the companies
were easily available for private engagements after supper.
Naturally the record of such occasions has in most cases
perished with the domestic account-books in which it was
entered. But Sir Edward Hoby invited Sir Robert Cecil
to a performance of Richard II — at least, I think so — in
1595*^ The gossip of Rowland Whyte informs us of the
banquets and plays given in honour of Sir Robert Cecil by
Sir Walter Raleigh and other friends on the eve of his mission
to France in 1598, of the two plays at a supper about the
same date by Sir Gilly Meyrick at the rival political head-
quarters of Essex House, and of the performances of Henry IV
under its origiilal title of Sir John Oldcastle^ when Lord
Chamberlain Hunsdon feasted the Flemish ambassador
Louis Verreyken in 1600.2 Similarly, in 1606 John Cham-
berlain went to a play at Sir Walter Cope’s, now Holland
House, and ‘ had to squire his daughter about, till he was
weary *, and in 1613 Sir Robert Rich had a play for the
delectation of the Savoyard ambassador after a supper in
Holborn .2 An amusing side-light on the improvised stage-
arrangements necessary in private houses is given by a stage-
direction in Percy’s Aphrodysial^ ‘ Here went furth the
whole Chorus in a shuffle as after a Play in a Lord’s howse ’.^
Wealthy citizens, if they were not too puritanically disposed,
could well afford to follow the lead of the nobles and gentry
of the court. And in the years before the controversy between

* Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain's).

* Sydney Papers, ii. 86 (30 Jan. 1598). ' My Lord Compton, my Lord
Cobham, Sir Walter Rawley, my Lord ^uthampton, doe severally feast
Mr. Secretary before he depart, and have plaies and banquets. My Lady
Darby, my Lady Walsingham, Mrs. Anne Russell, are of the company,
and my Lady Rawley ' ; ii. 90 (15 Feb. 1598), * Sir Gilley Meiricke made
at Essex House yesternight a very great supper. There were at yt, my
Ladys Lester, Northumberland, Bedford, Essex, Rich ; and my Lordes
of Essex, Rutland, Monjoy, and others. They had 2 plaies, which kept
them up till i a clocke after midnight'; ii. 175 (8 Maich 1600), 'All
this Weeke the Lords haue bene in London, and past away the Tyme in
Feasting and Plaies ; for Vereiken dined vpon Wednesday, with my Lord
Treasurer, who made hym a Roiall Dinner ; vpon Thursday my Lord
Chamberlain feasted hym, and made hym very great, and a delicate
Dinner, and there in the After Noone his Plaiers acted, before Vereiken,
Sir John Old Castell, to his Great Contentment '. It seems that, for their
patron, the Chamberlain's men would give up an afternoon.

* S.P,D, Jac. I, xix. 12 (1606); Birch, i. 243; Winwood, iii. 461.
A gallant might also have his private play at night in a tavern ; cf . Nashe,
Lenten Stuffe (isgg, Works, iii. 148), ' To London againe he will, to reuell
it, and haue "two playes in one night, inuite all the Poets and Musitions
to his chamber the next morning ' ; A Mad World, my Masters, v. i. 78,

' a right Mitre supper ; — a play and all '.

^ Aphrodysial, v. 5, cited by Reynolds, Percy, 258.

THE COURT PLAY

221

the corporation and the actors became acute, a play was
thought no inappropriate accompaniment to the annual
feast of a guild, or the welcome or valediction of a civic
dignitary.^ The domestic plays of the Oxford and Cambridge
colleges had their origin in the Renaissance theories of educa-
tion, and dispensed with the professional mimes. A detailed
study of them lies outside the scope of these volumes.^ The
Inns of Court men, too, could hold their own upon the boards
at will. But for their ordinary solace they were accustomed
to take the easier course of calling in professional aid. At
the Inner Temple, Beaumont mentions a Christmas show of
Lady Amity, probably not long after his admission in 1600,
and the Treasurer’s accounts of the Inner Temple, which are
extant from 1605, show that from that year to 1611 there
was always a play, at a cost of £5, either upon Candlemas or
upon All Saints’ Day, and in some years on both dates.
At Candlemas 1611, something must have gone wrong, for on
February 10 the Benchers passed a decree :

' For that great disorder and scurrility is brought into this House
by lewd and lascivious plays, it is likewise ordered in this parliament
that from henceforth there shall be no more plays in this House*
either upon the feast of All Saints or Candlemas day, but the same
from henceforth to be utterly taken away and abolished.'

At the following feast of All Saints the only expenditure
entered by the Treasurer is of £2 10s. for a ‘ consort ’ of music
and £2 for antics and puppets. These must have proved
but inadequate substitutes, for on November 24 the period
of austerity was brought to an end by the withdrawal of
the interdict.

‘Whereas of late years upon the two festival days of All Saints
and Candlemas, plays have been used after dinner for recreation
which have lately been laid down by order in parliament, it is now
ordered that the same order shall henceforth stand repealed.’

The payments are now resumed, and continue twice a year,
generally at the increased rate of £6 135. 4^. At Candlemas
1613 some misunderstanding seems to have led to a supple-

‘ Machyn, 222, 290, notes a play, either in the Guildhall or in that of
the Lord Mayor’s company, on 6 Jan. 1560, and a play at the Barber
Surgeons’ feast on 10 Aug. 1562. The Pewterers collected * playe pence *
at their * yemandrie feast’ about 1563 (C. Welch, Pewterers, i. 233).
Recorder Fleetwood saw a play at a dinner with the outgoing sheriffs
on 29 Sept. 1575 {Hatfield MSS. ii. 116 ; dated 1573 in error in Murdin,
ii. 259, and Nichols. EHz, i. 357).

* They are fully treated for the sixteenth century by F. S. Boas.
University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914). and more briefly for the whole
period, with a valuable bibliography, by the same writer, in C. H. vi. 293.
I have recorded the extant plays, English and Latin, in App. K.

222

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mentary payment to ‘ another company of players which
were appointed to play the same day*. On All Saints 1614
and both Candlemas and All Saints 1615, the players are
specified to have been the King’s men.^ From the other
Inns the story is more fragmentary. The devices for the
famous Gray’s Inn Christmas of I594~5, reported in the
Gesta Grayorunt, were mainly due to the fertile imagination
of the lawyers themselves. In addition to the continuous
burlesque of state ceremonies in the court of Purpoole and
the mask sent to Whitehall at Shrovetide, they included
a special show of Amity for the reception of the ambassador
of Templaria on January 3. But this had its origin in the
disorders of an earlier revel on Innocents’ Day, when the
confusion was so great that the Inner Temple men left in
dudgeon, and the show then intended was not given. To
supply its place, ‘ a Comedy of Errors (like to PlatUvs his
Menechmtis) was played by the players. So that night was
begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but Confusion
and Errors ; whereupon, it was ever afterwards called.
The Night of Errors" On the following day there was a trial,
and a supposed sorcerer or conjurer was arraigned on the
charge amongst others ‘ that he had foisted a Company of
base and common Fellows, to make up our Disorders with
a Play of Errors and Confusions Similarly the Middle
Temple in 1597-8 varied their own fooling with plays on
28 December and 2 January, which from the absence of
details in the narrative were probably supplied by pro-
fessional actors.^ And this house, too, must have been
accustomed to keep Candlemas with a play, for a note of
February 1602 in John Manningham’s diary makes mention
of Twelfth Night as given ‘ at our feast The same practice,
known as the Post Revels, prevailed at Lincoln’s Inn. Here
the notices are of an earlier date, and preserve the memory

‘ Ch. xxiii, s.v. Beaumont; Inderwick, Inner Temple Records, i. Ixv, 219;
ii. xlix, 23 sqq., 56, 64. A payment of 205. * to the players ' at the Christ-
mas of 1615 was probably, in view of the amount, for musicians. The
earlier account-books are not preserved. On the plays, not necessarily
professional, of the 1561-2 Christmas, cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Brooke.

* Gesta Grayorum (M. S. R.), 22, 23. R. J. Fletcher, The Pension Booh
of Gray's Inn (i90i)» prints entries of payments for * the play at Shrovc-
tyde ' 1581, of which nothing more is known, and * the play in Michaelmas
terme * and ‘ the Tragedie ’ in 1587-8, in which year the Inn gave Catiline
at home before Lord Burghley on i6 Jan. (M. S. C, i. 179) and The
Misfortunes of Arthur at court on 28 Feb. Gascoigne’s Supposes and
Jocasta were both produced at Gray’s Inn in 1566-7. The Inn was to
have entertained the Duke of Bracciano with * shewes ’ at Qiristmas
1600-1, but he left too soon (Chamberlain, 99 ; Camden (tr.), 535).

* B. Rudyerd, Memoirs, 12, 13. The ascription of these revels to * the
Christmas of 1599 ’ in Mediaeval Stage, i. 416, is an error ; cf. p. 169.

* Manmngham, i8.

THE COURT PLAY

223

of performances by the Chapel boys in 1565, 1566, and 1580,
and by Lord Roche’s, or more probably Lord Rich’s, men
in 1570.^

I have digressed somewhat from the ways of the court.
The arrangements for performances were in the hands of the
Revels, and are therefore only traceable in detail before 1589,
after which year the extant accounts of that office are very
summary. As Christmas drew near, symptoms of bustle
began to show themselves in the work-rooms. A good deal
of time was spent in the discovery and preparation of suitable
pieces. It would seem that the available companies were
invited to submit the various plays in which they had exer-
cised themselves by public performance, that these were
then recited, and a selection made from them to the number
which her majesty intended to hear ^ Both in 1574-5 and
in 1576-7 the accounts record the trying over of plays that
were not ultimately given. These ‘ rehearsals ’ or ‘ proofs ’
took place in the hall or the ‘ great chamber * of St. John’s, or
the Master’s lodgings, and were of an elaborate character, for
it was thought worth while to bring in cumbrous properties

* J. D. Walker, Black Books of Lincoln's Inn, i. xxxui, 344, 348, 352,
362, 374, 418 ; ii. 55. It was ordered on 2 Feb. 1565 that ' M' Edwards
shall have in reward lii)®, nij<* for his plee, and his hussher x®, and x® more
to the children that pleed ' (m margin, ‘ Children of the Queues Chappell ').
The accounts of I564-5. however, show £\ i8s. 2d, for a supper and for
staff torches, clubs, and other necessaries for the play, and £i reward
for the boys ; those of 1565-6 £2 to the boys of the Queen's chapel and
their master for a play at the Purification ; those of 1569-70 £\ ‘ lusori-
bus ' of ' Lord Roche ’ at the Punfication ; those of 1579-io £^ 6r.

on 9 Feb. ' to M' Ferrand [Farrant] one of the Queen's chaplains pto
commedia '. On 12 May 1598, a levy was made for the exx>enses of ' the
gentlemen that were actors in the matter of the shew the last Christmas '.
No more is known of this show. On the Inns of Court Christmases
generally cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 413.

• The Westminster accounts of 1564-5 (Murray, ii. 168) include * at y*
rehersing before Sir Thomas Benger for pinnes and sugar candee vi^ * and
*the second tyme att the playing of Heautonti. for pinnes halfe a thousand
vi<* ', but there is nothing to suggest that any play but MUes Gloriosus
was given before the Queen. The Revels Accounts (Feuillerat, Elis, 145,
176, 179, 238, 277, 325, &c.) have (i 571-2), * playes . . . chosen owte of
many and ffownde to be the best that then were to be had, the same
also being often pervsed, & necessarely corrected & amended (by aU
thafforesaide officers) ' ; (1572-3), ‘ muzitians that plaide at the proof of
Duttons play ' . . . ‘ rushes in the hall & in the greate chambere where
the workes were doone & the playes rezited ' ; (1574-5) ‘ at Wynsor . . .
for peruzing and reformyng of Farrantes playe ' . . . ‘ wheare my Lord
of Leicesters menne showed theier matter of Panecia * ... * where my
Lord Clyntons players rehearsed a matter called Pretestus ', Ac. ; (1576-7),
* To Whitehall and back againe to recyte before my Lord Chamberleyn *
. , . ‘ to Sf Johns ... for the play of Cutwell ' ; (i 579-80) ' Thmges . . .
brought into the Masters Lodginge for the rehearsall of sondhe playes to
make choise of dyvers of them for her maiestie ', &c., &c.

224

THE COURT

for them and to employ musicians. When the selection
had been made, further rehearsals were required, especially
as the texts had to undergo a process of ‘ reforming * or
editing, in order that they might be ‘ convenient * for her
majesty’s hearing. There had been a bad blunder at the
second Christmas of the reign when ‘ the plaers plad shuchc
matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off Some-
times the office called in special aid to make such alterations ;
sometimes, as we learn from Henslowe’s diary, the companies
employed their own poets to carry them out, or to write
special prologues or epilogues.^ At first the perusal of plays
appears to have been a common responsibility of the officers.®
^^ile Blagrave was in charge, it was supervised by the
Lord Chamberlain, for whose satisfaction rehearsals some-
times took pla^e at court. Tilney was encouraged by his
commission of 1581 to treat it as his personal function, and
charged wages for attendance at the office, with a porter
and three other servitors, but as a rule without his colleagues,
on nearly every day between All Saints and Christmas for
the purpose of carrying it out.^ All the officers, on the other
hand, were concerned with the provision of the fittings of
the stage and the properties and apparel necessary to furnish
a sumptuous appearance for the players. The details of this
provision are so mixed up in the accounts with those for the
masks that they can only occasionally be assigned to indivi-
dual plays. The wording of certain entries suggests that,
while some plays required a complete outfit, for others the
Revels was only called upon to supplement what the com-
panies already possessed.® Probably the stuffs employed

» Machyn, 221.

* Cf. chh. xxiii, xxiv, s.vv. Chettle (1602) ; Dekker, Fortunatus, Phae-
than : the anonymous Histriomastix . The prints of several plays contain
special court prologues or epilogues, e.g. Lyly's Campaspe and Sapho
and Phaon.

® Buggin*s Revels memorandum of 1573 (Tudor Revels, 33) indicates
that his proposed Serjeant * is with the master and the reast of the officers
to be at the rehersall of playes *.

* Feuillerat, Eliz. 326 (1579-80, 50 days), 337 (1580-1, 70 days), table ii
(1581-2, 44 days), 352 (1582-3, 62 days), table iii (1583-4, 56 days). 368
(1584-5, 66 days), 389 (1587-8, 64 days; 1588-9, 57 days). The com-
mission (App. D, No. Ivi) authorized the Master to command players * to
appear l^fore him with all suche plaies tragedies comedies or showes as
they shall haue in readines or meane to sett forth and them to presente
and recite before our said servant or his sufficient deputie *.

® Feuillerat, Eliz. 145, 193, 286, 320. In 1571-2 all the plays were
‘ throwghly apparelled and flumished ' ; in 1573-4 all were * fytted and
ffumyshed with the store of thoffice and with the woorkmanshipp and
provisions herein expressed*; in 1578-9 the clerk seems to distinguish
between plays furnished with * sondrey *, * some *, * manie and * verie
manie ' t^gs ; in 1579-80 seven out of nine plays were ' wholie furnyshed

THE COURT PLAY 225

were less expensive than those lavished on the masks. Certain
articles, such as armour, were generally hired. Elaborate
properties, which might entail the designing of special
* patterns had often to be constructed. The fixed ‘ com-
position ’ of £66 6s. 8d. for all the ordinary charges of plays
imposed upon the office in 1598 cannot have left much
margin for apparel and properties.^ But probably by this
date the companies were themselves better equipped.

When the actual night of performance arrived, all the
officers gave personal attendance at Court. Here they had,
in Tilney’s time, until they were crowded out and driven to
hire for themselves, an office and a chamber for the Master,
both of which they kept supplied with fuel and rushes.^
They had also to superintend the conveyance of the ‘ stuff ’,
either by wagon or by barge and tiltboat, to fit the players
with the gloves which seem to have been de rigueur at a Court
performance, and to furnish such amenities of the tiring-
house as ‘ an iron cradle to make fire in ’ and a close-stool.®
With the officers came a doorkeeper and three servitors,
who probably acted as dressers.^ As the court performances
were always at night, beginning about 10 p.m. and ending
about I a.m., the arrangements for lighting were a constant
preoccupation.® From the wire-drawers* bills incorporated
in the accounts we can gather that use was made of candle-
sticks of various kinds and sizes, of lanterns, and of branches
large and small. Candelabra were formed of as many as
twenty-four branches, each bearing four lights, and hung
upon wires strained across the hall.® But here again the
precise provision made for plays cannot be disentangled
from that made for masks. There is no special reference to
footlights.

Except for the lighting and the maintenance of a ‘ music-
house *, the situation of which is unknown, the functions of
the Revels do not appear to have extended beyond the

in this offyce and of the others one had ' sondrie ' and one * many *
things ; c£. Graves, 83. * Cf. ch. iii, p. 93.

* Feuillerat, Eliz. 354, 370, 381, 391 ; cf. ch. iii, p. 89.

* Ibid. 140. 174, 236, 320, 336, 349 (gloves) ; 338 (cradle) ; 205

(close-stool). The Westminster boys in 1565 found their own * sugar
candee ‘ comfetts *, and ‘ butterd beere for y« children being horse *
(Murray, ii. 168). * Feuillerat, Elix. 337.

• Tarlton, 10, records a jest, * Tarlton having plaied before the queen
till one a clock at midnight '. De Silva describes entertainments of
Elizabeth in private houses early in the reign which ended at 1.30 and
2 a.m. (ch. V, pp. x6i, 162). Under James, a play on 7 Jan. 1610, began
at 10 p.m. (Arch, xii. 268).

• Feuillerat, Elix. 159, 202, 216, 300, 353, 368, Ac. We hear of * high
‘ vice ' stock *, * pricke *, * plate *, and ‘ hand * candlesticks.

2239*1 Q

226

THE COURT

tiring-house and the decorative enrichment of the stage.^
The fabric, both of the stage and of the seating for spectators,
was a matter for the Works.^ The ‘ apparelling ’ of the room
was under the supervision of the Gentleman Usher of the
Chamber, and in the marshalling of the audience the Lprd
Chamberlain could count on the assistance of the ‘ white
staves ’ of the Household, and of the few officers who still
survived from the once important office of the Hall.^ No
picture or detailed description of the auditorium survives.^
A brief notice of 1594 shows us Elizabeth conspicuous * in
a high throne, richly adorned and next to her chair the
Earl of Essex, * with whom she often devised in sweet and
favourable manner ’A This high throne was no doubt the
* state which was brought into the action of The Arraign-
ment of Paris. Something more may be gleaned from the
narratives of royal visits to the universities. That to Cam-
bridge in 1564, indeed, affords no very close analogy, for
the structure of the stage was of quite an abnormal type.®
It was not in a hall, but in the chapel of King’s College, and

* Cunningham, 214 (1611-12), * For a musik house dore in the hall and
a doore for the musik house in the Bancketing house with lockes ' ; pos-
sibly that in the hall was used for plays rather than masks.

* Cf. App. B and the Works Account of * Chardges done for the revells
in the hall ' at Shrovetide 1568 in Feuillerat, Eliz. 120. But the Revels
themselves had ' to enlardge the scaffolde in the hall ' in 1579-80 (327).

* Cf. ch. ii, p. 34.

^ On the woodcut in Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590),
cf. Bihl, Note to ch. xviii. ® Cf. App. A.

* Peck, Desiderata Curiosa, ii, 267 (from account of Matthew Stokys in
Harl. MS, 7037 (Baker MS, 10)) ; * For the hearing and playing whereof
was made, by her highness surveyor and at her own cost, in the body
of the church, a great stage containing the breadth of the church from
the one side to the other, that the chapels might serve for houses. In
the length it ran two of the lower chapels full, with the pillars on a side.
Upon the south waU. was hanged a cloth of state, with the appurtenances
and half path, for her majesty. In the rood loft, another stage for ladies
and gentlewomen to stand on. And the two lower tables, under the said
rood loft, were greatly enlarged and railed for the choice ofiScers of the
court. There was, before her majesty's coming, made in the King's
College hall, a great stage. But, because it was judged by divers to be
too little, and too close for her highness and her company, and also far
from her lodging, it was taken down. When all things were ready for the
plays, the Lord Chamberlain with M', Secretary came in, bringing a multi-
tude of the guard with them, having every man in his hand a torch-staff
for the lights of the play (for no other lights were occupied) and would
not suffer any to stand upon the stage, save a very few upon the north
side. And the guard stood upon the ground by the stage side, holding
their lights. From the quire door unto the stage was made as 'twere
a bridge, railed on both sides, for the queen's grace to go to the stage ;
which was straitly kept.' This account is also in Nichols, Eliz. i. 151.
In his first edition Nichols (iii. 27) also gave an account by Nicholas
Robinson, which adds the detail that the stage was ' structura quaedam
ex crassioribus asseribus altitudine pedum quinque * ; cf. also Boas, 91.

THE COURT PLAY

227

was built five feet high right across the nave from wall to
wall. The ‘ state ’ for the Queen was placed on the stage
itself, against the south wall. She reached it by a bridge
from the choir door. At the other end of the stage, under
the north wall, stood the actors, with two side chapels to
serve for their entrances and exits. Cecil and Dudley, as
Chancellor and High Steward of the University, ‘ vouchsafed
to hold both books on the scaffold themselves, and to provide
that sylence might be kept with quietness I am not quite
clear whether these books were prompt-books, or copies of
the texts, provided in order that the Queen or her train, if
they thought fit, might help out their Latinity. When the
Westminster boys brought the Miles Gloriosus to Court in
1565, they spent 115. on ‘ one Plautus geuen to the Queenes
maiestie and fowre other unto the nobilitie and the Sapientia
Salomonis which they gave Elizabeth in 1565-6 is still extant.^
Only a few other privileged spectators were allowed on the
King’s College stage, at the north end. Seats were provided
for ladies and gentlemen in the rood loft, and for the chief
officers of the Court at ‘ the twoe loer Tables ’ below the
rood loft. The only lighting was provided by the torches
of the guard, who were aligned along the sides of the stage.
At Oxford, on the other hand, where the plays were given in
Christ Church hall, it is reasonable to assume that the arrange-
ments were directly modelled upon those prevalent in the
palaces.^ There was, however, one exceptional feature, due
to the desire to enable the Queen to reach the hall, without
being incommoded by the press of spectators. A temporary

1 Cf. ch. xii and App K.

* Plummer, 123 (from Bereblock's account) * ‘ Primo ibi ab mgenti
solido pariete patefacto aditu proscenium insigne fuit, ponsque ab eo
ligneus pensilis, sublicis impositus, parvo et perpolito tractu per trans-
versos gradus ad magnam Collegu aulam protrahitur ; festa fronde coelato
pictoque umbraculo exornatur, ut per eum, sine motu et perturbatione
prementis vulgi, regina posset, quasi acquabili gressu, ad praeparata
spectacula contendere. Erat aula laqueari aurato, et picto arcuatoque
introrsus tecto, granditate ac superbia sua vetens Romani palatii ampli-
tudinem, et magnificentia imaginem antiquitatis diceres imitan. Parte
illius superiori, qua occidentem respicit, theatrum excitatur magnum et
erectum, gradibusque multis excelsum luxta omnes parietes podia et
pegmata extnicta sunt, subsellia eisdem supenora fuerunt multorum
fastigiorum, unde viri lUustres ac matronae suspicerentur, et populus
circumcirca ludos prospicere potuit. Lucemae, lichni, candelaeque
ardentes clarissimam ibi lucem fecerunt. Tot lurainanbus, ramulis ac
orbibus divisis, totque passim funalibus, inaequali splendore, incertam
praebentibus lucem, splendebat locus, ut et instar diei micare, et specta-
culorum claritatem adiuvare candorc summo visa sint. Ex utroque scenae
latere comoedis ac personatis magnifica palatia, aedesque apparatissimae
extniuntur. Sublime fixa sella fuit, pulvinanbus ac tapetiis omata.
aureoque umbraculo operta, Reginae destinatus locus erat * ; cf. Boas, 99.

228

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door was cut in the side of the hall and a ‘ proscenium ’ or
‘ porch ’ built in front of it, which was approached by a
wooden ‘ bridge * or stairway, adorned with a painted roof
and hung with greenery.^ It was a wise precaution, for
undergraduates were not excluded, as they had been at
Cambridge, and the press on the main staircase of the hall
was so great that one of the low bounding walls was broken
down and killed a college cook and two other persons.^ The
interior appearance of the hall is fully described by Bereblock.
The stage was at the upper or western end, raised high above
a flight of steps. The Queen had a high seat beneath a gilded
state, the exact location of which is not specified. The lords
and ladies were accommodated on scaffolds round the walls,
and the lesser personages in galleries above them. Every
kind of lighting device seems to have been utilized, including
‘ ramuli ’ and ‘ orbes *, in which we may see the ‘ branches *
and ‘ plates ’ of the Revels Accounts. The Christ Church hall,
with a stage at its upper end, was used again when James
came in 1605, and we hear of a dispute between the academic
functionaries and those of the Household as to the placing
of the King’s chair. The latter complained that it was fixed
so low that only His Majesty’s cheek would be visible to the
auditory ; the latter attempted to explain that, by the laws
of perspective, the King would have a much better view than
if he sat higher. There was a solemn debate in the council
chamber, resulting in the decision that a King must not
merely see, but be seen, and the state was moved to the
middle of the hall, twenty-eight feet from the stage, which
in fact proved too far, as he could not well hear or understand
the long speeches. The Queen and Prince shared the state with
the King ; in front, but on a lower level, were seats for ladies ;
the state itself was ringed with lights ; on either side were
placed nobles ; and the populace thronged around the walls.®

I think it may be taken that this seating, with the sovereign
in the middle of the floor and directly opposite the stage, was
that ordinarily employed. It may be illustrated by a French
engraving of Louis XIII in Richelieu’s Palais Royal theatre
of the mid-seventeenth century, which also shows very
clearly the seating round the walls and the lighting by means
of suspended chandeliers.^ I notice that Mr. Ernest Law,

» I think Feuillerat, M. P. 73, must be misled by the Cambridge analogy
and the use of the term * proscenium ' in supposing the ‘ pons ' to have
been within the auditorium and the state on the stage. The ‘ proscenium ’
was doubtless the ' porch ’ taken down after the visit (Boas, 106). The
exterior of the hall has been refaced since 1566, but Dr. Boas tells me
that during some recent alterations an unexplained aperture was traceable
from within. * Cf. ch. iv.

* Cf. p. 234. * Jusserand, Shakespeare tn France (tr.), 93, pi. xi.

THE COURT PLAY

229

in tracing the outlines of the vanished hall of Whitehall,
places the stage at the lower or screen end of the building,
and suggests that the pantry was utilized as a tiring-room.^
He may have evidence as to this in reserve ; but the Christ
Church analogy, for what it is worth, points to a stage at
the upper or dais end. The Revels Accounts contain many
items bearing upon the scenic decoration of the plays ; but,
as they were compiled, unfortunately, to satisfy the financial
appetite of contemporary auditors, rather than to elucidate
the archaeological problems of posterity, they not unnaturally
take for granted a familiarity with the general system of
that decoration which we do not happen to possess. The
discussion of the problems, which cannot be dissociated
from those presented by the public theatres; must be left
for treatment, with the aid of the evidences furnished by
plays themselves, in a later chapter.^ But the actual infor-
mation furnished by the accounts may conveniently be
summarized at this point. The outstanding features were
evidently certain ‘ houses appropriate to the action of the
plays, and specially prepared, with considerable trouble and
expense, for each production, although no doubt the Revels
officers, as in the case of masking garments, exercised their
economical ingenuity where possible in the * translation ’
of old material.^ These houses appear to have been structures
in relief, presumably practicable for entrances and exits, and
perhaps also on occasion for interior action. Wooden frame-
works, fitted with hooped tops, were covered with painted
cloths of canvas, which was strained on with nails or pins,
and was sometimes fringed."^ From the amount of canvas

* L. T. R. vii. 41. In The Times for 3 Dec. 1917 Mr. Law has a similar
reconstruction of the arrangements at Hampton Court, wherein he assigns
the stage to a point before the screens, with the gallery over the screens
for * upper chamber scenes rooms behind the screens for tiring-houses,
and a players’ supper room, and the Watching Chamber for rehearsals.
But again he produces no evidence. ^ Cf. ch. xix.

^ The expenses of 1578-9 (vide infra) included the ' mendmg ’ of houses.
But I agree, broadly, with the argument of Graves, 53, that scenery for
a Court performance had to be ei&er new or renewed.

^ In 1563-5, ’canvas to couer diuers townes and howsses and other
devisses and clowds * (Feuillerat, EHm, 116) ; in 1 571-2, ‘ sundry Tragedies
Playes Maskes and sportes with their apte howses of paynted canvas '
(129) ; in 1572-3, * sparres to make frames for the players howses ' (175) ;
in 1573-4, ‘ hoopes for tharbour and topp of an howse ' , . . * pynnes
styf and great for paynted clothes ' . . . ’ nayles to strayne the canvas '
. . . ’ canvas to paynte for howses for the players and for other properties
as monsters, greate hollow trees and suche other ’ . . . * cariage for the
firames for the howses that served in the playes ’ . . . ‘ iij elme boordes
and vij ledges for the frames for the players ’ . . . ' cariage of firames
and painted clothes for the players howses* (197, 201, 203, 204, 218) ;
in 1574-5, ’canvas to make frenge for the players howse’ (244); in

THE COURT

*30

used, it may be judged that they were of considerable size.^
The painting of the cloths was a matter of skilled workman-
ship. William Lyzarde, with thirty assistants, was employed
upon it in 1571.^ In 1572-3 * patternes ’ were prepared for
the play of Fortune.^ In most of the earlier accounts the
houses are only mentioned incidentally and generically. But
in 1567-8 they are stated to have consisted of ‘ Stratoes
howse, Gobbyns howse, Orestioes howse, Rome, the Pallace
of Prosperitie, Scotland and a gret Castell one thothere side
And when Edmund Tilney became Master of the Revels in
^579» ke introduced, perhaps under pressure from the auditors,
a practice, which lasted for some years, of including in the
preliminary schedule of plays, with which his accounts began,
a note of the specific houses constructed for each. Thus in
I579“;8 o, there were a country house and a city for The Duke
of Milan and the Marquis of Mantua^ a city and a battlement
for Alucius^ a city and a mount for The Four Sons of Fabius,
a city and a battlement for Scipio Africanus^ a city and a
country house for an unnamed play, a city and a town for
Portia and Demorantes, a city for a play on the Soldan and
a duke, and a great city, a wood, and a castle for Serpedon,^
In 1580-1 there were a city and a battlement for Delight^
a great city and a senate house for Pompey, a city and a
battlement for each of two unnamed plays, a house and
a battlement for a third, a city and a palace for a fourth,
and a great city for a fifth.® In 1582-3 there were four
pavilions for A Game of the Cards^ a cloth and a battlement
of canvas for Beauty and Housewifery^ and a city and a battle-
ment of canvas for each of four other plays.*^ In 1584-5
there were a great curtain, a mountain, and a great cloth of
canvas for Phillida and Corin^ a battlement and a house of
canvas for Felix and Philiomenaj a great cloth and a battle-
ment, well, and mount of canvas for Five Plays in One^
a house and a battlement for Three Plays in One, and a house
for an unnamed play.® It is evident that decorative variety
was sought after. Even when several successive plays could
be fitted into the normal scheme of a city and a battlement,
the stage architects had to prepare a separate device for each.

1576-7, * cariadge ... of a paynted cloth and two frames * (266) ; in 1587-9,
' timber hordes and workmanshipp in mending and setting vp of the
houses by greate ' (390) ; in 1587-8 * paynters for . . . clothe for howses *
(381) ; in 1579-80, ‘ ffurre poles to make rayles for the battlementes and
to make the prison for my Lord of Warwickes men * (327).

‘ Feuillerat, M. P. 69, calculates that enough cloth was painted in
1580-1, 1582-3, and 1584-5 to allow of about 16 square yards for every
house or other d^cor used. ^ Feuillerat, Elis, 134.

* Ibid. 176. ♦ Ibid. 119. • Ibid. 320.

• Ibid. 336. Ibid. 349. ® Ibid. 365. -

THE COURT PLAY

231

I think that when the Elizabethans spoke of ‘ houses * on
the stage, they were perhaps regarding them primarily as the
habitations of the actors rather than of the personages whom
these represented. They were the tiring-houses, in which
the actors remained when they were not in action and to
and from which they made their exits and their entrances.
At any rate, the term in its technical use seems wide enough
to cover, not merely the palaces and the more humble domestic
edifices which made appropriate backgrounds to the comings
and goings of individual kings and citizens — of an Orestes,
a Dobbyn — but also more elaborate and composite structures
of ‘ battlements ’ and ‘ cities *, of which the former doubtless
represented the external view of the walls and gates of a town
or castle, and the latter some internal town scene, a street
or market-place, perhaps before the doors of more than one
house in the narrower sense. We hear of such specialized
forms of ‘ house ’ as ‘ pavilions * or tents, the ‘ Senat howse *
used for Quintus Fabius in 1573-4 and the ‘ prison ’ which
must have formed part of the * cittie ’ for The Four Sons of
Fabius in 1579-80. These, and probably other houses, were
no doubt sufficiently practicable for personages to be seen,
and in some cases also heard, inside them ; and the senate
house was veiled by curtains, which doubtless remained closed
until the proper moment for interior action to take place.
There are other references to curtains, the mechanism by
which they were drawn, and the sarcenet of which they were
made.^ It has been suggested that some of these were front
curtains, but there is no reason, so far as the evidence in the
Revels Accounts is concerned, why they should not all, like
the senate house curtain, have been veils for individual
‘ houses ’, such as were used in masks, and had been used in
the corresponding domus of miracle-plays. It is possible,
although not certain, that some of the ‘ great cloths ’ pro-
vided may have been for hangings to the back and side walls
of the stage, rather than for covering houses. There is no
reason why these should not have been painted in perspective,
but the extent to which, if at all, perspective was employed is
one of the points on which we arc most in the dark.^ Sub-
sidiary structures, hollow trees, arbours, gibbets, altars, wells,
gave variety to the action, and helped out the decorative

‘ In 1571-2, * curtyn ringes ’ (Feuillerat, Eliz, 140) ; in 1573-4, ' poles
and shivers for draft of the curtins before the senat howse . . . curtyn
ringes . . . edging the curtins with ffrenge . . . tape and corde for the
same ' (200) ; in 1576-7, ‘ a lyne to draw a curteyne ’ (275) ; in 1580-1,
a purchase of 8 ells of orange tafieta double sarcenet at io< an ell for
a curtain for a play (338) ; in 1584-5 * one greate curteyne ' of sarcenet
for Phillyda and Corin (365).

* Cf. ch. xix.

THE COURT

effect of the houses.^ For these also timber frames and
canvas served. The hollow tree was doubtless a feature of
the wood scenes, in which the painter’s art, whether in relief
or in perspective, was supplemented by the natural foliage
of holly and ivy.* Elaborate rocks, such as are familiar in
the masks, were also constructed. That for The Knight in
the Burning Rock in 1578-9 required much timber, carried
a chair, and was reached by a scaling ladder. The effect of
burning was produced by lighted aqua vitae^ I am not quite
sure whether a cloud drawn up and down by a cord and
pulleys in the same year belonged to this play or to a mask,
but obviously there was much give and take between the
methods of plays and masks.^ Spectacular elements were
freely introduced into plays. A ‘ monster ’ of hoops and
canvas, with a man moving inside it, was as easy for the
managers of a Perseus and Andromeda in 1572-3 as for those
of a Peter Pan in our own day ; and doubtless the character
was equally popular.^ Hounds’ heads were * mowlded * for
the cynocephali in The History of the Cenofalles of 1576-7.®
The mediaeval ‘ devices for hell, and hell mowthe ’ were still
in vogue in 157 1-2, and in the same year Narcissus was
enlivened by thunder and lightning and by the sounds of
a hunt which rang through the palace court-yard, and Paris
and Vienna by a tourney and barriers, in which players
mounted on hobby-horses contended for a ‘ christall sheelde *.’

* In 1572-3, * an awlter for Theagines ’ (Feuillerat, Ehz. 175); in

1573- 4, * lathes for the hollo tree * . . . ‘ one baskett with iiij eares to

hang Dylligence in the play of Perobia ... a iebbett to hang vp Diligence '
. . . * hoopes for tharbour ' (199. 203) ; in 1578-9 * a rope, a pulley,

a basket' (296) ; in 1584-5, a well for Five Plays in One (365). For
Cutwell, rehearsed but not performed in 1576-7 (277), ' the partes of y®
well counterfeit ' were brought from the Bell to St. John’s.

* In 1572-3, * a tree of holly for the Duttons playe . . . holly for the
forest . . . tymber for the forest . . . provizion and cariage of trees and
other things to the Coorte for a wildemesse in a playe ' (Feuillerat, Eliz,

175, 180) ; in 1573-4. ‘ holly and ivye for the play of Predor ’ (203) ; in

1574- S. * uioss and styckes ’ and holly and ivy (239, 244).

* Feuillerat, Eliz, 306. There were rocks or mountains also in 1574-5,
1579-80, and 1584-5 {244. 320. 3^5)-

^ Ibid. 240. It was an old device. Graves, 27, quotes Palsgrave^
Acolastus (1540), ‘in stage-playes, when some god or some saynt
made to appeare forth of a cloude : and succoureth the parties which
seemed to be towardes some great danger, through the Soudans
crueltie ’.

* ‘ Andramedas picture ' . . . ‘ Benbow for playing in the monster ’ . . .
* canvas for a monster ' . . . ' hoopes for the monster * (ibid. I75,

176, 18 1). • Ibid. 265.

^ Ibid. 140, 141. The ' hunters that made the crye after the fox
(let loose in the Coorte) \\riih their ho^VTides, homes, and hallowing • bad
already been a feature of Edwardes’ Palaenunt and Arcite at Oxford
in 1566.

THE COURT PLAY 233

So far as minor properties and apparel are concerned, it is
often difficult to distinguish the respective needs of masks
and plays in the long lists of provisions which the Revels
officers detail.^

Something may be gleaned, to eke out the rather tantalizing
indications of the account-books, from the more descriptive
accounts of performances at the universities. The process
is legitimate, because the organization of such productions
was largely in the hands of Revels and Works experts brought
from London by the Lord Chamberlain, who would naturally
employ or adapt the methods already found successful at the
Court itself. But even the university writers take a good
deal of contemporary knowledge for granted. Of the Cam-
bridge visit in 1564 we learn no more than that two chapels
before which the stage was set served for ‘ houses ’ ; of the
Oxford visit in 1566 that ‘ palatia ’ and ‘ aedes * were built
up * ex utroque scenae latere and that a temple in a wood
was staged for an out-of-doors episode ; of the Oxford visit
of 1592 nothing.* Greater detail is forthcoming in 1605.
The chroniclers were interested by the experiments of ‘ one
M^ Jones, a great Traveller *, the result of which was
stupendous in the eyes of the O^dord Public Orator, although
an envious spy from Cambridge declared that he ‘ performed
very little to that which was expected The stage on this
occasion was slightly raked, so that the actors as they entered
appeared to be coming down hill. At the back was a false
wall, with a space of five or six paces behind it, ‘ for their
howses and receipt of the actors In this wall Jones had
set revolving pillars or peripetasmata, obviously based on the
triangular TreplaKToi of Vitruvius, whereby ‘ with the help of
other painted clothes *, he was able to change the face of the
scene twice in the course of each play. Thus in Ajax Flagel-
lifer the scene successively represented first ‘ Troia et littus
Sigaeum *, then ‘ Sylvae et solitudines horrenda antra et
furiarum domicilia’, and finally ‘ Tentoriorum naviumque
facies *. The machines which worked these changes were

^ Feuillerat, M, P, 57, gives an excellent summary of the data in the
Accounts, but his schedule of properties does not attempt to disentangle
masks and plays. The latter were liberally supplied. The Italians at
Heading and Windsor during the progress of 1574, for example, were
furnished with ‘ golde lether for cronetes ‘ shepherdes hookes ' 1am-
skynnes for shepperds *. ‘ arrowes for nyniphes ‘ a syth for Satume
‘ iij devells cotes and heades and one olde mannes fries cote ’ (Feuillerat,
Eliz, 227). Probably the apparel used on the stage was of less costly
materials than that worn by lords and ladies in masks, but it was doubtless
calculated to present the same glittering effect.

* Cf, p. 226, and Plummer (from Bereblock), 138. ‘ Fiunt igitur in silvis
septa marmorea ' with three altars.

234

THE COURT

painted ‘ motantibus quasi nubibus, ut eas, Sole Britannico
statim ingressuro, aufugientes putares
The changing stage of 1605 was obviously an advance from
the Elizabethan methods of twenty years before. But it can
hardly be assumed that the new principles were regularly
adopted in the Jacobean Court. In 1614-15 the Revels office
was still buying ‘ canvas for the boothes and other necessaries
for a play called Bartholmewe Faire and the entry seems

to suggest * houses * of the old type.^ Possibly Inigo Jones
was not sufficiently successful with his Oxford mechanism to
inspire confidence. It is not until much later, in Caroline
days, that we can clearly discern him beginning to apply to
the presentation of Court plays the proscenium arch and the
other perfected results of his studies in the mask.® There is
no obvious trace of the new methods even in his interesting
design for the new Cockpit at Court, which may date from
about 1632. This shows a building 58 feet square without
and octagonal within. Five sides of the octagon are occupied
by the auditorium, which contains a pit with balconies above,
and apparently a royal box at the back ; the other three
by a stage 35 feet wide and 16 deep, which stands 4^ feet
above the pit level, and has a 5-foot apron and a semicircular
back wall of a 15-foot radius. This does not appear to be
adapted either for hangings or for shifting scenes, but is
a Palladian fagade of two stories in solid architecture adorned
with niches and busts and a tablet inscribed ‘ Prodesse et
delectare ’. It is pierced below by a large archway and four
other doors, and above the archway is a single window.^

^ I. Wake, Rex Platonicus stve Musae Regnantes (1607), 46, 79, 112,
134 ; Nichois, i. 530 (from account, probably by Philip Stringer, in
Harl. MS. 7044, f. 201). Wake thus describes the hall : * Partem
Aulae supenorem occupavit Scena, cuius Proscenium moUiter declive
(quod actorum egressui, quasi e monte descendentium, multum attulit
dignitatis) in planitiem desinebat. Peripetasmata scenicaque habitacula,
machinis ita artihciose ad omnium locorum rerumque varietatem appa>
rata, ut non modo pro singulorum indies spectaculonim, sed etiam
pro Scenarum una eademque fabula diversitate subito (ad stuporem
omnium) compareret nova totius theatralis fabricae facies. . . . Media cavea
thronus Augnstalis cancellis cinctus Principibus erigitur, quern utrinque
optimatum stationes communiunt : reliquum inter thronum et theatnim
interstitium Heroinarum Gynaeceum est paulo depressius.’ In Annus
Recurrens the scene was a zodiac with a sun moving by artifice, and the
play lasted from the Ram to the Fishes. Stringer adds the details about
the turning pillars, the false wall, and the participation of Jones.

* Pipe Office, Declared Accounts (Revels), 2805.

* Thorndike, 191. ^ Cf. p. 217.

BOOK II

THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

*AXAa fm ovk cVl roi^o) /Acya <^pov^. ’AAA’ cttI tw /xt;v ;

^EttI Attt rots affipoiTLV. ofrroi yap ra ipui vcvpocnraora ^coi^icvoi
rpifftov<r( ftc. — Xenophon, Symposium,

VIII

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM

\B%hliographtcal Note . — Most of the material for the present chapter,
including extracts from a few pre-Elizabethan writers, is collected in
Appendix C ; the more official documents in Appendix D are occasionally
drawn upon. The Puritan controversy has been studied by C. H. Herford,
A Sketch of the History of the English Drama in its Social Aspects (i88i),
and E. N. S. Thompson, The Controversy between the Puritans and the
Stage (1903), from the academic point of view in F. S. Boas, University
Drama in the Tudor Age (1914), and in relation to the theory of dramatic
criticism by H. S. Symmes, Les Dihuts de la Critique dramattque en Angle-
ierre jusqu'd la Mori de Shakespeare (1903), and Renaissance criticism in
general by J. E. Spingarn, History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance
(1899), and G. Saintsbury, History of Criticism, vol. ii (1902). Useful
collections of contemporary treatises are G. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan
Critical Essays (1904), and J. E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth
Century (1908).]

The investigations of my opening book have shown clearly
enough that in the Tudor, as in the mediaeval, scheme of
things there was ample room for the stage and its players.
The revelling instinct survived, and the old native love of
mimesis and spectacle had been reinforced by a literary delight
in the revival of classical drama and in every form of the
give and take of dialogue. Nor was the appreciation of the
folk for the ruder forms of sensational and farcical entertain-
ment less keen ; and a period of general acceptance of the
stage as an element in social life might have been anticipated,
in which it stood greatly to gain by the more settled and less
migratory habits of the royal household and the possibilities
of building up a permanent head-quarters for itself in London
which resulted from the change. Unfortunately, however,
events moved otherwise. A new factor emerged, which
militated against anything like |[eneral acceptance ; and the
period of the greatest literary vitality in the development of
the English drama proved to be also a period of embittered
conflict with widespread ethical and religious tendencies,
which in fact ranged over the whole of social life and was

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 237

ultimately destined to shatter, not only the stage, but the
Tudor scheme of things itself. In its main outlines the issue
was that which had been set ever since the decadent theatre
of Greece and Rome came face to face with Semitic asceticism
and barbarian indifference. The traditional dislike and con-
tempt of the moralist for the mime had still to find their
last expression. But it is a noteworthy aspect of this new
revival of the secular struggle, that the attack came less from
official churchmanship than from those extreme champions
of reformation principles, whose zeal against abuses, and in
particular against abuses countenanced by official church-
manship, won them the name of Puritans. The rise of
Puritanism was coincident with the beginnings of the agita-
tion against the stage, and the growth of Puritanism in
London was the chief feature in a process which stirred the
local magistracy, as represented by the Lord Mayor and
Corporation of the City, to try its strength, with the stage
as a bone of contention, against the central authority of the
Privy Council. The controversy is so important a one, from
the point of view of the history of the stage and of civiliza-
tion, that even at the risk of retraversing ground already
trod, it is desirable to consider at some length the forces that
were at work.^

The general relation of Reformation sentiment to the drama
is a matter of rather complicated cross-currents. In the first
place, there was the humanist rediscovery of the classics,
fanning into flame the enthusiasm for Terence which had
smouldered throughout the Middle Ages themselves, and
making full use in its theory of education of the school-play
as a means of inculcating pure Latinity, sound moral pre-
cepts, and gentlemanly self-possession in the conduct of
affairs. In some at least of its manifestations this tendency
is comprehensive enough to include the professional, as well
as the academic, player. An example may be found in the
treatise De recta reipublicae administratione of the German
jurist, John Ferrarius. This was written in 1556 and trans-
lated into English by William Bavande of the Middle Temple
in 1559. was probably not without its influence upon the
line of apologetic adopted by those gentlemen of the Inns of
Court to whom the London stage came to look as its warm-
est supporters. For Ferrarius players are no longer the
proscribed folk of the Middle Ages. They have become one
of the seven handicrafts of the commonweal ; and, provided

‘ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 206.

238 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

that care is taken that their performances shall stand with
honesty, they have a function, not merely to delight in times
of recreation, but also to further morals by ministering
ensamples of virtue and goodness to be embraced, and of
vice and filthy living to be eschewed. In his short chapter,
Ferrarius makes use of two notions, which became common-
places of Elizabethan dramatic criticism. Both are derived
from classical sources. One is Horace’s statement in the De
Arte Poetica of the double object of comedy in the mingling
of delight with profit ; ^ the other the Plutarchan image of
the bee sucking its honey even from noxious herbs, the honey
of ethical precept from the herbs of wanton or foolish writ-
ings.^ Even more famous, from its glorification in Hamlet^ is
a third passage which Ferrarius does not cite, and that is the
definition of comedy, attributed by the fourth- century gram-
marian Donatus to Cicero but not discoverable in his extant
works, as imiiatio vitae^ speculum consuetudinis^ imago veri-
tatis.^

There were, however, other humanists who may have shared
the abstract ideal of Ferrarius, but who at any rate were
sufficiently conscious of the extent to which the popular stage
of their own day fell short of that ideal, and were in con-
sequence led to condemn, or perhaps more often to ignore, it.
Of such was Ludovicus Vives, who devoted to dramatic
poetry a section of his work on the corruption of the arts,
in which, while accepting the Horatian account of the end
of comedy, he points out that, with the notable exception of
the author of Celestina^ the playwrights, having been driven
by the resentment of the great against satire to find their
material in love-intrigues and similar themes, had lamentably
failed to justify themselves by a proper determination of their
plots to the ends of salutary morals. Even for Vives, Plautus
and Terence are necessary to education ; but he would use
his blue pencil, and is by no means so warm a champion of
the Latin drama on its ethical side as his older and more famous
contemporary Erasmus. In his formal writings on education

‘ Horace, De Arte Poetica, 343 :

Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,
lectorem delectando pahterque monendo.

Horace's treatise was first translated into English by Thomas Drant in
1567; cf. O. L. Jiriczek, Der Elisabethanische Horaz (1911, Sh.-Jahfhuch,
xlvii. 42).

* Plutarch, Quomodo adolescens poetas audit e debet, c. xii.

* Donatus (ed. Wessner, i. 22), Excerpta de Comoedia ; cf. Hamlet,
III. ii. 23, also Gosson's criticism of Lodge's scholarship on this point in
App. C, No. XXX.

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 239

Erasmus gives Terence the first place amongst Latin writers,
adding Plautus with more hesitation and with a stipulation
for carefully selected plays. And in a letter written about
1489 to an anonymous friend he tilts with vehemence against
the doctrine of certain homunciones imperiivli, into livididi,
who maintain that Terence is no fit reading for Christians,
and explains to their ignorance that the end of dramatic
writing lies precisely in the refutation of vice. Erasmus is
closely followed by his English disciple, Sir Thomas Elyot,
whose defence of comedies in The Governour (1531), as no
‘ doctrinall of rybaudrie * but * a mirrour of man’s life, wherin
iuell is not taught but discouered ’, served as a standard
authority to be quoted in support of much later apologetic.
Nor is the point of view confined to what may be called the
secular wing of humanism. The Terentian school-play is an
essential feature in the pedagogy of such convinced reformers
as Philip Melanchthon at Wittenberg and John Sturm at
Strasburg,^ and from Sturm the tradition passes direct to
one of the most scholarly and by no means one of the least
austere of early English Protestants, Roger Ascham. It is to
be observed, however, that Ascham’s concern for Terence is
wholly on the side of letters and Latinity. Both Vives and
Erasmus had had their moments of uneasiness as to how far,
after all, the ethics of pagan Rome were quite meet to be
assimilated by Christian youth. Vives would expurgate both
Plautus and Terence, and Erasmus Plautus at least. Ascham,
very much impressed with the demoralizing influence of
Italian books and Italian manners on English civilization,
has no doubt at all that, necessary as both Plautus and
Terence are to the schoolmaster, their matter is but ‘ base
stuff ’ for the contemplation of the budding divine or civil
servant. Views similar to Ascham’s had already established
themselves amongst both Catholic and Protestant teachers,
and the attempt to combine Roman impeccability of phrase
with Christian impeccability of theme and incident had pro-
duced the remarkable dramatic type known as the ‘ Christian
Terence ’.^ This had had its vernacular, as well as its Latin,
developments in many lands. Its acceptability in the eyes of
the earlier reformers in England may be illustrated from the
chapter De honestis ludis^ which forms part of the treatise
De regno Christi written by Martin Bucer as a New Year’s gift

' W. H. Woodward, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renais*
sance, 218 ; C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England
and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, loi.

* Mediaeval Stage, ii. 216.

240 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

for Edward VI in 1551.^ Bucer allows of plays, both for the
exercise of youth, and for the honest and not unprofitable
delectation of the public. They must be written by learned
and pious men, and may be either comedies or tragedies, which
deal respectively with mean and exalted actions. For comic
themes he instances the dissension between the shepherds of
Abraham and Lot, the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, and
Jacob’s service amongst the flocks of Laban ; and he expounds
no less than six moral lessons which the first of these plots
may serviceably inculcate. As for tragedy, the histories of
patriarchs, kings, prophets, and apostles, from Adam onwards,
are full of those irepiTr^r^iat upon which Aristotle lays such
stress. It is from such sources that Christians should draw
their poetry, rather than from the impious fables and histories
of the Gentiles. And care must be taken to let vice awaken
a horror of sin and well-doing a sense of the divine grace ;
for edification is to be the end of the action, even if, in order
to attain it, some sacrifice of literary decorum is necessitated.
Bucer holds that plays conceived in this spirit may with
advantage be performed by youth in the vernacular, as well
as in Greek and Latin ; and declares that some have already
been written which, although men of secular learning may
miss in them the literary graces to be found in the comedies
of Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence and the tragedies of
Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca, are yet to be preferred for
their religious character to pieces whose effect upon morality
can only be deplorable. It is to be noticed that Bucer pro-
poses to submit all plays before production to the judgement
of persons at once expert in the dramatic art and of sound
divinity, one of whose functions it shall be to let nothing
which is leve aut histrionicum be shown. This is interesting
not only because it anticipates the actual Tudor experiments
in a dramatic censorship, but also because it indicates that
the idea of a censorship arose out of ethical, as well as out
of merely political, considerations. It is possible that Bucer
may have been familiar with the actual working of the system
at Geneva, to which further reference will presently be made.

In actual practice the Protestant religious drama, whether
it was imitating Latin comedy or advancing on the lines of
the popular morality, used the Scriptures with some dis-
crimination. It drew freely upon the historical books and
upon the parables. The parable of the prodigal son, in

‘ Extract in App. C, No. v. Symmes, 31, cites Peter Martyr Vermigli
as representing the same point of view, but the passage on pla3rs in
In librutn ludicum Commentarii (1563), c, 14, reproduced in his Loci
Communes (1563), Classis ii, c. 12, is not very lucid.

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM

241

particular, perhaps because it was so obviously cognate to
beloved Terentian themes, became the parent of a copious
dramatic literature, both in Christian Latin and in all the
vernaculars. The central topics, the mysteries of the faith
in creation, fall, and incarnation, and the life of Christ him-
self, were much more charily touched. This may have been
due to a reprobation of the methods of the miracle-plays,
which is itself traceable to more than one cause. Protestant
reverence could hardly fail to reinforce the criticism of the
leve atU histrionicum in the popular representations, which
often made itself heard even amongst orthodox Churchmen.
Luther is at one with Ludovicus Vives on the point.^ And
Protestantism had its own particular ground of quarrel with
the miracle-plays, in that they were hardly dissociable from
the Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation and the like,
which their great feast-day of Corpus Christi had been
specially invented to glorify. Certainly the decadence of the
Corpus Christi play sets in pretty quickly after the middle
of the sixteenth century, and in more than one instance the
hand of the Protestant reformer is to be traced in the process.*
It is of the Corpus Christi plays, as well as of the Hock-play
at Coventry, that Robert Laneham is thinking when he
regrets ‘ the zeal of certain theyr Preacherz : men very com-
mendabl for their behauiour and learning, & sweet in their
sermons, but sumwhat too sour in preaching awey theyr
pastime An exception to the normal temper of Protestant-
ism in this respect is to be found in that fiery protagonist
of the earlier English reformation, John Bale, amongst whose
few extant plays are a Prophetaey a John Baptist^ and a
Temptation^ while a list of his various dramatic experiments,
which he has himself left upon record, indicates that they
included a continuous New Testament cycle from the Presenta-
tion in the Temple to the Resurrection.^

It is, of course, in form only and not in spirit that Bale
touched the ecclesiastical compilers of the Corpus Christi
plays. The author of Kinge Johan and the translator of
Pammachius is the typical English figure of that characteristic
sixteenth-centu^ movement whereby the drama, like every
other form of literary expression, bound itself for a time to

‘ J. E. Gillet {M,L.A. xxxiv. 465), citing e.g. an utterance of 1530,
* Et ego non illibenter viderem gesta Christi in scholis pueromm ludis
seu comoediis latino et germanice rite ac pure compositis repraesentari
propter rei memoriam et affectum iunioribus augendum *.

* Mediaeval Stage, ii. iii.

* Robert Laneham* s Letter (ed. Fumivall), 27,

* Mediaeval Stage, ii. 224, 446.

2229-1 R

242 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

the service of heretical controversy. Both the Christian
Terence and the vernacular morality contained elements
which could be readily adapted to the purposes of polemic,
no less than to those of edification ; and Bale appears to
have been the principal agent of Cromwell’s statecraft in
what was probably a deliberate attempt to capture so power-
ful an engine as the stage in the interests of Protestantism.
And it is to be observed that this movement was not con-
fined to those academic branches of the drama in which it
may be supposed to have had its origin. For once the theo-
logian and the histrio laid aside their ancient antagonism,
and not in school and college refectories only, but in every
inn-yard and on every village green, the praises of the pure
Gospel were sung, and Pope and priests were derided in play,
at the bidding of the wily Privy Seal. Of this there is sufficient
evidence in the passionate protest of Bale after Cromwell had
fallen, and the players’ mouths had been shut by the Act
for the Advancen:ent of true Religion in 1543.^

None leave ye unvexed and untrobled, no, not so much as the
poore minstrels, and players of enterludes, but ye are doing with them.
So long as they played lyes, and sange baudy songes, blasphemed
God, and corrupted men’s consciences, ye never blamed them, but
were verye well contented. But sens they persuaded the people to
worship theyr Lorde God aryght, accordyng to hys holie lawes and not
yours, and to acknoledge Jesus Chryst for their onely redeemer and
Saviour without your lowsie legerdemains, ye never were pleased
with them.

No doubt many things were changed in English Protestant-
ism after the days of the Marian exile ; and a ready explana-
tion of the active Puritan hostility to the stage is afforded
by the substitution of a Calvinist for a Lutheran bias in the
conduct of the Reformation. But the antithesis must not be
pressed too far. Assuredly the returning preachers brought
with them a new seriousness in their view of life and a haunting
mistrust of the moral evils lurking even in innocent modes
of recreation. The * merry England ’ of tradition formed no
part of their ideal. Moreover, they were less in bondage than
their predecessors of Henry’s reign to the prestige of secular
learning, and less likely to be impressed, therefore, by the

‘ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 222 . The passage quoted is from the Epistel Exhorta-
torye of an Inglyshe Christian {i $44), written under the pseudonym of Henry
Stalbridge. Foxe, Book of Martyrs, vi. 57, says of Bishop Gardiner, ‘ He
thwarteth and wrangleth much against players, printers, preachers. And
no marvel why : for he seeth these three things to be set up of God, as
a triple bulwark against the triple crown of the Pope to bring him down ;
as, God be praised, they have done meetly well already.*

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 243

literary and educational significance of the drama. But so
far as the popular stage is concerned, there is no reason to
suppose that they would have failed to see eye to eye with
John Bale himself, for it is pretty clear from the passage
quoted above that Bale’s tolerance of the interlude-players
was entirely conditioned by the polemical use he had been
enabled to make of them, and that, apart from what he chose
to regard as. their conversion, they would have had short
shrift at his hands. Now by the time of the Puritans this
break in the normal relations of the stage to the pulpit had
come to an end. The drama of Protestant controversy sur-
vived its original manipulator, Cromwell. It flourished greatly
under Edward VI. It won the imitation of the Catholics
under Mary. And when Elizabeth came, its exponents made
haste to re-enter a field which was probably by now capable
of yielding profit in a worldly as well as a spiritual sense.
It is clear that at the beginning of the reign Elizabeth and
her ministers deliberately continued Cromwell’s policy of
encouraging stage-polemic. During the Christmas of 1558
the court and the streets were full of masks, in which cardinals,
bishops, and abbots were held up to derision as crows, asses,
and wolves.^ During the debates on the Act of Uniformity
in the following spring. Abbot Feckenham protested against
the way in which ‘ by the onely preachers and scaffold players
of this newe religion, all thinges are turned up-side downe
Almost simultaneously the dispatches of Venetian agents
mention the prevalence of anti-Catholic plays in hostels and
taverns, and dwell particularly upon one performance in which
Philip and Mary and Cardinal Pole were represented in exposi-
tion of their religious views. ^ The inwardness of the move-
ment is made clear by a letter of the Duke of Feria to Philip
himself, in which he reports Elizabeth’s diplomatic repudia-
tion of the insolent pieces, and adds that he knew for a fact

■ Cf. ch. V.

* Strype, Annals, i. ii. 436, ‘ Sithence the comynge and reigne of our
most soveraigne and dear lady quene Elizabeth, by the onely preachers
and scaffold players of this newe religion, all thinges are turned up-side
downe, and notwithstandinge the quenes majesties proclamations most
godly made to the contrarye, and her vertuous example of lyvinge,
sufficyent to move the hearts of all obedyent subjects to the due service
and honour of God.' If a proclamation as to plays is meant, it must
be the earlier one of 8 April 1559, as the speech was probably delivered
in the debate on the second reading of the Act of Uniformity on 26 April.
Strype, i. i. 109, points out that it is definitely assigned by Cotton MS,
Vesp. D 18, to Feckenham, and that Burnet's ascription to Nicholas
Heath, Archbishop of York, which has been followed by Collier, i. 168,
and others, rests on a mistaken note by a later hand on a copy in a
0 . C. C. C. Synodalia MS, ® V. P, vii. 65, 71, 80.

244

THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

that the arguments were given to the players by none other
than Sir William Cecil. ^ The Elizabethan methods of govern-
ment were tortuous, and it is a little difficult to say how long
the licence of the stage to deal with matters of religion lasted.
Ostensibly the proclamation of i6 May 1559, presumably
issued in deference to De Feria’s complaints, brought it to
a very definite stop. But it was one thing to issue a pro-
clamation and another to see that it was enforced ; and as
late as the June of 1562 we find De Feria’s successor, the
Bishop of Aquila, still protesting against Elizabeth’s failure
to carry out her perpetual promises, by suppressing the books,
farces, and songs which were written in dishonour of his
royal master.* The burden of these, however, may have been
political rather than strictly religious. Certainly, when Eliza-
beth considered that she had ‘ settled ’ the affairs of the
Church, it in no way remained part of her intention that they
should continue to be matter for public debate. Nor is it
likely that the extreme vulgarities of Protestant controversy
were altogether to her private taste. Already during the
Christmas of 1559 ^ court had been broken off for

some unknown offence, and when some Cambridge students
pursued the queen to Hinchinbrook in the autumn of 1564
with a scandalous dramatic parody of Catholic ritual, the
royal displeasure was unmistakable.* Meanwhile the pulpit
attacks upon the ‘ fleshly and filthy ’ sayings and doings
of players begin with Bishop Alley’s St. Paul’s sermon
delivered in 1561, and it is natural to suppose that the
temporary alliance between Church and Stage was already
dissolved and the normal hostility restored, before Bishop
Grindal came to pen his vehement outburst to Cecil on
23 February 1564 in favour of the permanent inhibition
of the ‘ histriones, common playours ’, that * idle sorte
off people, which have ben infamouse in all goode common
weales ’. The theory that the first controversial phase of the

* Sp. P, i. 62 (29 April 1559 ). * She was very emphatic in saying that
she wished to punish severely certain persons who had represented some
comedies in w^h your Majesty was taken off. 1 passed it by, and said
that these were matter of less importance than the others, although both
in jest and earnest more respect ought to be paid to so great a prince
as your Majesty, and I knew that a member of her Council had given
the arguments to construct these comedies, which is true, for Cecil gave
them, as indeed she partly admitted to me.'

* Sp, P. i. 247. England and Protestantism got as good as they gave.

Bohun, 99, records how, about 1560-2, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was
made the butt of French court jesters and comedians. Mary of Scotland
was hardly persu^ed, in 1565, to punish some Catholics who had made
a play against the ministers, with a mock baptism of a cat in it (Randolph
to C^il, in Wright, Eliz. i. 190). ® Cl ch. v.

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 245

Elizabethan popular drama was but of short duration need
not be regarded as invalidated by the fact that plays of
distinctly Protestant type continued to be published until
at least the third decade of the reign. There is no very
obvious proof that these plays were performed at all, and
certainly none that they belonged to the popular rather than
the academic stage. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose
that the dates of composition fell anywhere near the dates
of publication, and in some cases such evidence as is available
points to a period very shortly after Elizabeth’s accession.
Several Protestant plays of Edwardian or earlier origin were
apparently revived by publishers at about the same time.'
In some of these the closing prayers have been altered so as
to apply to Elizabeth, and a similar revision has taken place
in the text, extant only in manuscript, of Bale’s Kinge Johan.
This seems to be evidence, perhaps more certainly as regards
the manuscript than as regards the prints, of actual per-
formance during the new reign.

If, then, what might have been the natural attitude of
the earlier English Protestantism to the popular stage was
deflected by something of an accident, it is also not quite
true to suppose that Calvinism was always and everywhere
uncompromisingly opposed to the drama in its more respect-
able forms. Calvin himself was not unaffected by humanist
influences, and more than one of his near associates, notably
Theodore Beza, his successor at Geneva, are to be reckoned
amongst academic playwrights. The annals of stage-history
at Geneva throw a valuable light upon the order of ideas
from which the Puritans started. During the later Middle
Ages the city had taken its full delight in spectacula of many
kinds. The abuses connected with these had formed the
subject of constant ecclesiastical prohibitions, the tradition
of which had only been continued by the reformers.-^ Calvin’s
principal forerunner, William Farel, had published theses at
mle in 1524, in which he laid down abstinence from dis-
guisings as a counsel of perfection.^ But he did not succeed

* Cf. ch. xxii.

® Calvin, Opera, xxi. 207 (Annales Calvtniam), gives prohibitions made
under Farel’s influence in 1537 ; for earlier records, cf. E. Doumergue,
Jean Calvin, iii. 579; H. D. Foster. Geneva before Calvm in American
Hist. Review, viii. 231.

* A. L. Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformatenrs dans les pays de
langue frangaise, i. 195, * Chnstianum ahenum oportet a bachanalibus
quae gentium more celebrantur, et ab hypocrisi ludaica in ieiuniis et aliis
quae non directore spiritu hunt : ac cavere oportet a simulachris quam
maxime.' Possibly, however, * simulachra ’ means ' images ' rather than
' disguisings '.

246 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

in making his principles wholly operative at Geneva, and
even when, after an abortive attempt in 1537, the so-called
‘ theocracy * was finally established by Calvin’s constitutions
of 1541, there was no absolute condemnation, except for the
clergy, of plays. ^ Dances were prohibited and such heathen
ceremonies as the Roi-boit at Twelfth Night and the Mardu
gras ^ ; but it seems to have been thought sufficient to leave
plays under the close inspection and control of the body of
ministers, whose functions included the maintenance of Church
discipline with the aid of a consistory of elders, and the
advising of the secular town council on all matters apper-
taining to faith and morals. It was not long, however, before
more radical views began to commend themselves to a certain
section of the ministers, and the question came to a serious
issue in some stormy episodes of the year 1546. On 2 May,
being Quasimodo Sunday, the council had permitted the per-
formance of a morality by one Roux Monet and others. They
had before them a certificate from the ministers that it was
of an edifying character, although some grumbling persons
declared that its object was to ridicule and satirize the trades-
men.^ About a month later, two fresh applications came
before them. One was apparently from a troupe of travelling
players and acrobats, and this was summarily refused as likely
to cause scandal.^ The other was more plausible. Some
local joueurs des ystoires desired to represent for the edifica-
tion of the people a dramatization of The Acts of the Apostles.
The council ordered the book of the piece to be submitted

‘ Calvin, Opera, x». 5, 16.

^ The proceedings against Mine Fran90ise Perrin for aUowing a dance
in her house are described in A. Roget, Htst. du Peuple de Genive, ii. 225.
In 1550 the council resolved (Calvin, Opera, xxi. 460), ‘ Item des ordon-
nances des dances qu’elles ne soyent point admoindnes mais]que Ton ne
soufre pas cela. Surquoy est arreste que soyent faictes cries a voix de
trompe que nulz naye a danser ny chanter chansons deshonnestes ny
dancer en fa9on que soit . sur poienne de estre mis troys iours en prison
en pain et eaue et de soixante sols pour une chescune foy la moytie
applique a I'hospital et laultre moytie a la court*. In 1557 {Opera,
XXI. 662) persons were brought before the consistory on an accusation of
‘ insolences faictes a un royaulme ' They had a cake, and in one girl's
slice ' y mirent ung grain de genie vie et pour ce lappellerent Royne et
cnerent a aulte voix la Royne boit '.

3 Calvin, Opera, xxi. 379 ; cf. Roget, li. 235.

* Calvin, Opera, xxi. 382 ; cf. Roget, ii. 238, ‘ Aulcungs joueurs des
antiques et puissance de Hercules ont pn6 que plaise a MM. de les laisser
jouer de bonne gr&ce la bataille des Mores et puissance de Harodes et
aultres antiques h^ros. Arrests pour obvier scandalle que ne doibgent
point jouer, mes, que demain se doibgent retirer.' Cf. the notices of the
Hercules performances at Paris in 1572 and at Utrecht in 1586 (ch. xiii,
s.v. Leicester’s), and p. 152, n. i, for an early Italian parallel.

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 247

to Calvin, and agreed that it might be performed, should
his report be favourable. Calvin and the other ministers
did not much like the proposal, more particularly as the
players declined to give alms to the poor out of the profits
of the enterprise. It so happened, however, that one of the
ministers, Abel Poupin, was himself the author of the play,
and partly because of this, and partly because he was not
sure that an attempt to prevent the performance would be
successful, Calvin seems to have persuaded his colleagues to
offer no objection. The formal sanction of the council was
therefore given, and Abel Poupin was ordered to make him-
self responsible for the conduct of the play. Reading between
the lines, we may perhaps discern some resentment amongst
the ministers, not only at the performance itself, which they
considered a waste of money that might have gone in charity,
but also at the domineering attitude adopted by Calvin and
Poupin. Even while the matter was still under discussion,
one of them, Philibert de Beauxlieux, was haled before the
consistory for saying that Calvin was taking the part of the
Pope and Poupin that of the cardinal. And when the decision
was arrived at there was an outbreak. A preacher of fiery
temper, Michel Cop, got into the pulpit and denounced the
play, accusing the women performers of a shameless desire
to display themselves in public and thereby ensnare the eyes
of men. For this he was summoned before the council ; but
Calvin took his part, and although they had differed as to
the toleration of the play, claimed that Cop had only exercised
the preacher’s proper liberty in saying freely what he thought
on a question of morals.^ The documents concerning this
incident include, in addition to numerous entries in official
registers, two private letters from Calvin to Farel,* in which
he describes what had taken place, and makes it clear that
his own willingness to allow the play arose from motives of
expediency and from a feeling that there were limits to the
pressure which could be put upon the public to abstain from

‘ Calvin, Opera, xxi. 381-4; cf. Roget, li. 236; Doumergue, iii. 579;
W. Walker, John Calvin, 298.

* Calvin, Ep. 800 (Opera, xii. 347), "... Nihil hic habemus novi, nisi
quod secunda comedia iam cuditur. Cuius actionem testati sumus nobis
minime probari. Pugnare tamen ad extremum noluimus, quia periculum
erat ne elevaremus nostram autoritatem, si pertinaciter repugnando tan-
dem vinceremur. Video non posse negari omnia oblectamenta. Itaque
mihi satis est si hoc, quod non est adeo vitiosum, indulged sibi intelligant»
sed nobis invitis . . .* This was on 3 June. Ep. 807 (Opera, xii. 355),
of 4 July, describes the dissensions amongst the mmisters, and adds,
* Auditis fratribus. respondi multas ob causas nobis non viden expedire
ut agerentur, et simul causas exposui ; nos tamen nolle contendere, si
senatus contenderet . . . nunc ludi aguntur*.

^48 the control OF THE STAGE

recreation. In reply the aged reformer anticipated the prob-
able future destiny of the frequenters of plays in terms which
recall the worst ferocities of Tertullian on this subject.^
Something more may be gathered as to Calvin’s personal
attitude towards plays from a sermon preached in 1556, in
which he expounds the prohibition of the change of sex-
costume in DetUerononty xxii. 5 as an absolute one, and as
applying particularly to the wearing of men’s dresses by
women and of women’s dresses by men in masks and mum-
meries.^ This is an exegesis which counted for a good deal
in the Puritan criticism of a stage in which boys habitually
took the female parts.

Abel Poupin’s much- discussed Acts of the Apostles was duly
given, and the council ordered themselves loges at the public
expense to see the show, and decreed a four days’ suspension
of arrest for debt in honour of the occasion. Shortly after-
wards the ministers approached the council as a body in
order to urge that the money devoted to plays might be
better bestowed on the poor, and it was thereupon resolved
that no more ystoyres should be given ' jtisque Ion voye le
temps pltts propre ’.^ This determination must, I think, have
been motived by some temporary conditions of special econo-
mic distress, for it was far from being the end of plays in
Geneva. In the following year, 1547, Richard Chaultemps
and his wife and children were refused permission for a jeu
de passe-temps^ which was thought contrary to Christianity,
and were given a teston to go on their way. On the other
hand, the council attended officially in the same year at
a performance of a Latin dialogue ‘ du livre de Joseph ’ by
the scholars of the college. In 1548 a wandering tragechieur

> Calvin, Ep, 802 (Opera, xii. 351) * Farellus Cal vino . . . Isti qui tani
delectantur ludis, utinam non serio dolore torqueantur. Timendum est,
ne qui alienis personis oblectantur quum propriam in Christo debeant
sustinere in omni genere officiorum, ne lerre cogantur non personates, qui
hngunt nocere, sed qui nimis vere afiUctent et angant. quis tandem
perfectani • . . hal^bit plebem ? Utinam in malis personati tandem
essent, nec aliquid ipsi facerent, tantum aliorum peccata repraesentarent
. . . omnes ea vitarent, in bonis veri essent actores, imo factores . . .
16 lunii, 1546.*

* Calvin, Sermo, cxxvi (Opera, xxviii. 18), * Ainsi done ce n'est point
sans cause que ceste loy a est^ mise ; et ceux qui prennent plaisir k se
desguiser, despittent Dieu : comme en ces masques, et en ces momons,
quand les femmes s'accoustrent en hommes, et les hommes en femmes,
ainsi qu'on en fait : et qu*adviendra-t-il ? Encores qu’il n*y eust point
nuUe mauvaise queue, la chose en soy est desplaisante k Dieu : nous oyons
ce qui en est ici prononc^ : Quiconqties le fait, est en abomination,* CHher
sermons, e.g. Sermo Ivii, condemn dances and jenx generally, without any
special stress on plays ; cf. P. Lobstein, Die Ethik Calvins, 113.

* Calvin, Opera, xxi. 385.

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 249

was allowed to perform on condition of avoiding any ‘ chos€
contre Dieu \ In 1549 scholars played a comedy of
Terence in a meadow, and received a gift of two crowns for
a banquet. In 1551 the council forbade the recitation of
a ballade by Abel Poupin at a banquet, but sanctioned a
* petite farce de joyettseU ’ for recreation’s sake. In 1558 the
seigneurs of Berne paid a visit to Geneva and one Maitre
Enoch proposed a play on a subject taken from the Berne
artnoiries of Jupiter and Europa, and another on the execu-
tion of five Berne scholars at Lyons. This application was
referred to Calvin for a report. In 1560 the reprinting of
Beza’s tragedy of Abraham's Sacrifice was approved by the
consistory. In 1561 Conrad Badius’s comedy of Le Pape
Malade was performed in the college hall and afterwards
printed, and permission was also given for a comedy by
Jerome Wyart, ‘ si M, Calvin est de cet avis ’. An interval
of some years without plays followed, until in 1568 the series
was resumed with Jacques Bienvenu’s comedy of Le Monde
Malade et Mai Pansi} It is hardly necessary to carry the
record further, since the proof is sufficient that, whatever the
private opinions of some of the ministers may have been,
the actual working of the theocracy was not inconsistent
with the production, under a careful censorship, of academic
or bourgeois plays, or even, although more rarely, of enter-
tainments of the type afforded by a professional tragechieur.
It was not until 1572 that the Synod of Nimes passed a con-
stitution for the whole of the French reformed churches, by
which all plays, other than those of a strictly educational
character, were forbidden.^

It must be doubtful whether even this decree would have
fully met the views of Michel Cop and his supporters. At
any rate, it is possible to trace the growth of a sentiment
amongst English theologians of the Calvinistic persuasion,

^ Calvin, Opera, xxi. 406, 450, 6S4, 734 ; Roget, ii. 238, 243 ; iii. 139 ;
vi. 192 ; Doumergue, in. 579, sqq.

* Dtscipltne des 6 gltses RifornUes, ch. xiv, art. 28 (Bulletin de la Soc.
de I* Hist, du Protestantisme, xxxv. 21 1), * 11 ne sera aussi permis aux
tidies d'assistei aux comMies, trag^es, farces, moraUt^s et autres jeux,
jou^ en public ou en particulier, vu que de tout temps cela a 6t6 d^feadu
entre chr^tieus, comme apportant corruption de bonnes moeurs, mais
surtout quand r£criture sainte est profanee ; n^anmoins. quand, dans un
college, il sera trouv^ utile k la jeunesse de repr^enter quelque histoire,
on la pourra toller pourvu qu’elle ne soit comprise en T Venture sainte.
qui n'est pas donn^e pour ^tre jou^, mais purement pr^h^, et aussi
que cela se fasse rarement et par Tavis du CoUoque qui en verra la com-
position.' The original decree of the Synod of Poitiers in 1 560. to which
this was an addition, only laid down that * les momeries et batcllenes ne
seront point souffertes, ni faire le Roi boit, m le March gras

250 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

which was not prepared to exclude the academic play from
the general condemnation of things theatrical. Naturally this
tendency shows itself mainly at the Universities, where tra-
gedies and comedies, both in Latin and in English, continued
to be part of the ordinary exercise of youth, especially when
Christmas was kept or entertainment had to be found for
a royal visit, and where men of high ecclesiastical standing,
such as James Calfhill, Penitentiary of St. Paul’s and Lady
Margaret Professor of Divinity, did not disdain to furnish
dramas for the use of their scholars.^ So far as Cambridge
is concerned, we find Vice-Chancellor Beaumont reporting to
Archbishop Parker in 1565 that * two or three in Trinity
College think it very unseeming that Christians should play
or be present at any profane comedies or tragedies We
find Sir John Harington, who was an undergraduate from
1576 to 1578, noting his recollection about 1597 that ‘ in
Cambridge, howsoever the presyser sort have banisht them,
the wyser sort did, and still doe mayntayn them ’. And we
find John Smith of Christ’s haled before the University for
an unguarded attack upon the less strict practice of his fellows
in a Lenten sermon of 1586.® It was at Oxford, however,
that the divergence of opinion became most articulate. The
protagonist was John Rainolds, afterwards President of
Corpus Christi College, and a man of great influence in the
Puritan party, whom he represented at the Hampton Court
Conference of 1604. Rainolds first touched the question, to
which his attention was probably called by the dispute then
raging in London, with a passing allusion to the ' festes
scenicorum, theatralia spectacula ’ as one of the great inter-
ruptions to Oxford studies, in his preface to some disputations
published in 1581. There is no reason to suppose that he
voiced the general view of the University, and in particular
of those of its members who were still under the influence
of the humanist spirit. Probably these were better represented
by the commentaries on the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle
published by John Case, Fellow of St. John’s College, in his
Speculum moralium quaestionum (1585) and Sphaera civitatis
(1588). Case commends plays, provided that they are an
expression of comitas, the Aristotelian eirpaTrcXfa, and not of
its excess scurrilitas. They are sanctioned by the use of

^ Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. CaUhill, for Walter Haddon's somewhat slighting
reference to his theatri celebrttas,

* Parker Correspondence (Parker Soc.), 226.

^ Str3rpe, Annals (1824), in. i. 496. Smith had said» * Si illud verum
sit quod auditione accepi, istius modi certe ludos dins devoveo et actores
et spectatores *

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 251

antiquity, and they give a lively picture of antiquity itself.
They teach experience of things and of the human heart, and
afford training — it is the scenae irigemina corona — in the
management of the voice, the features, the gestures. All this
is, of course, in the traditional humanist vein. Some of the
current criticisms of the drama are quoted, only to be refuted.
It is not necessarily indecorum for a man to wear the dress
of a harlot on the stage, if his object is to expose the vices of
harlotry, ‘ non est enim monstrum vestes sed mores meretricis
induere It is true that the Fathers condemned plays, but
they had in mind the abuses of plays and in particular the
devotion of plays to the service of idols. It is ridiculous to
hold that the dignity of kingship is offended if it is imper-
sonated by an actor. The offence is no more than when the
outlines of a king are represented in a picture. No doubt
Case has the academic drama almost wholly in his mind, and
would have been inclined to dismiss the professional stage
contemptuously enough as scurrilitas} He is certainly careful
to make it clear that the plays of which he approves are not
‘ inanes et histrionicae fabulae, Veneris illecebrae \ but witty
comedies and magnificent tragedies ‘ in quibus expressa imago
vitae morumque cernitur ’. He did not convince John Rainolds ;
it is just possible that the ninepin arguments, which in true
scholastic fashion he set up and knocked down again, were
hardly to be accepted as an adequate statement of the Puritan
position. Rainolds evidently acquired a reputation in the
University for ‘ preciseness ’ as regards the drama ; and the
time came when the academic playwrights thought it well to
challenge him in public. Their champion was Dr. William
Gager of Christ Church, two of whose plays, Ulysses Redux
and RivaleSf were down for performance by the Christ
Church students during the Christmas of 1591-2. Rainolds
was invited by one Thomas Thornton to see the Ulysses
Redux. He refused and being pressed gave his reasons. It
was not therefore unnatural that when Gager appended to
the HippolyiuSy which was also given, a new apologetical
epilogue in which arguments against the stage, very similar
to those of Rainolds, were put into the mouth of one Momus,
our theologian should infer that by Momus none other was
intended than himself. He must have cried ‘ Touc}U\ and
thereby gave Gag^r an opportunity of sending him a printed

^ I am not wnting the history of the Oxford stage, but it is pertinent
to note that a statute of 1584, just as Case was wnting, had excluded
common stage-plays from the University, both on grounds of health and
economy, and that * the younger sort . . . may not be spectatours of so
many lewde and evill sports as m them are practised ' (B^, 225).

252 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

copy of Ulysses, with an enlarged epilogue and a repudiation
of any personal intention in the character of Momus. This
led to a letter from Rainolds, in which he set out his views
upon the stage at great length and with considerable learning,
to a reply from Gager, who was or professed to be stung by
some of the reflections cast by Rainolds upon the Christ
Church men, and to a rejoinder from Rainolds, in which he
reiterated his original arguments with even greater elabora-
tion. His main contentions were four in number. Firstly,
he laid stress upon the infamia with which the Roman
praetors had ‘ noted * histriones, and refused to accept Gager’s
pleas that this only applied to those who played for gain, or
that gentlemen who only appeared upon the stage rarely and
at long intervals could not properly be called histriones at
all. Secondly, he adopted Calvin’s interpretation of the
Deuteronomic prohibition of the change of sex-costume as
an absolute one, belonging to the moral and not merely the
ceremonial law. Gager had taken the view, which later on
had the support of the learned Selden, and which to a folk-
lorist hardly needs demonstration, that what Moses had in
mind was a change of costume forming part of an idolatrous
ritual ; and had also committed himself to the weaker argu-
ment that a man might justifiably, as Achilles did, put on
a woman’s clothing to save his life. The latter Rainolds
denied, and pointed out that, even if it held good, it would
hardly cover a change designed for a purely histrionic pur-
pose. His third argument was based on the moral deteriora-
tion entailed by counterfeiting wanton behaviour in a play ;
and his fourth on the waste both of time and money involved.
He does not wish to be thought an enemy either of poetry
or of reasonable recreation, but he expresses a doubt whether
some hours were not spent over Gager’s plays that ought to
have been spent at sermons. The theory of humanistic
educators that acting teaches lads self-confidence he is not
prepared to admit as a sufficient justification of their practice.
The debate is, of course, a good deal complicated by topics
of mere erudition and by disputes as to whether Momus was
really meant as a caricature of Rainolds, or as to whether
Rainolds’s abstract argument about infamia bore the concrete
implication that such honest youths as the Christ Church
students or so well-voiced a musician as the Master of the
Choristers, who had played with them, were in fact infames,
or as to the extent of approval implied by the presence of
University dignitaries and of the queen herself at performances
of Gager’s pieces. Anyway, said Rainolds, the queen’s laws
set down players as vagabonds. Given their common pre-

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM

253

mises, it must be acknowledged that both in learning and in
logic the Puritan had the advantage over his opponent,
although common sense was on the side of the latter, and
it is with some scepticism that one reads the statement of
the printer who gave Rainolds’s share of the controversy to
the worid in 1599, that ultimately Gager * let goe his hold,
and in a Christian modestie and humilitie yeelded to the
truth, and quite altered his iudgement *. My own conviction
is that Gager would have subscribed to anything, in order to
have done with receiving argumentative letters from Rainolds.
But when Rainolds had disposed of Gager, he had to meet
a fresh adversary in Alberico Gentili, an Italian who held the
professorship of civil law at Oxford and had committed him-
self to a different view as to the force of the praetorian
infamia. Between these two pundits the discussion continued
for some time without contributing much to the elucidation
of the main issue. Rainolds’s book, the first line of the title
of which was Th' overthrow of Stage-Playes^ furnished many
weapons later on for the armoury of Prynne, and material
for ridicule in the play of Fucus^ sive HistriomastiXy produced
at Queens’ College, Cambridge, in 1623.

The problem with which, long before the University dis-
putants handled the matter at all, the London Puritans had
to deal, was not one of nice differentiation between the posi-
tion of the amateur and that of the professional player. Their
concern with the academic drama was comparatively small ;
some at least of them were prepared to subscribe to all the
allowances for it that were made by the Synod of Nimcs.^
What they were face to face with was the rapid growth in
London of professional playing as a recognized occupation,
using an increasing number of playing-places, almost entirely
free from control on its ethical side, and tending more and
more to become a permanent element in the life of the com-
munity. And the attitude of condemnation which they
adopted was in the main one in which Lutheran, Calvinist,
and humanist, Case and Gager no less than Rainolds, would
in theory at least have concurred. The writings against the
stage, especially those of the critical period from 1576 to
1583, are of a very heterogeneous character. The most
important are, on the one hand, long passages in two treatises
by ministers devoted to the flagellation of social evils generally,
the Dicing^ Dauncing, Vaine PI ayes ^ or Enterludes (1577) of
John Northbrooke, and the Anatomie of Abuses (1583) of
rhillip Stubbes ; and on the other, three special pamphlets

‘ Northbrooke, 103. Stubbes took the same line in the Preface to his
first edition, but afterwards cancelled the passage.

254 the control OF THE STAGE

by sometime playwrights who had embraced conversion, and
had the advantage of speaking from inner knowledge of the
profession they were attacking. Of these two, The Schoole
of Abuse (1579) Playes Confuted in Five Actions (1582)
were by Stephen Gosson, who became the vicar of St. Botolph’s
in the City, and the third was by Anthony Munday, who, as
Gosson put it, returned to his own vomit again, and resumed
play-writing. Munday’s contribution was the Third Blast of
a composite publication issued under the title of A Secoftd
and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters (1580).
The Second Blast was a translation of the chapter against
spectacula from Salvian’s fifth-century De Gubernatione Dei,^
These five books form the main indictment of the stage, as
it developed itself at Puritan hands or under Puritan influ-
ences. In addition there were many minor onslaughts, in
sermons by Thomas White (1577), John Stockwood (1578),
and others at the famous City pulpit of Paul’s Cross, in works
of devotional theology, such as Gervase Babington’s Expose
Hon of the Commandements (1583), and in many examples of
the miscellaneous literature that stood for modern journalism.
The arguments used in support of the attack are naturally
various. Some 'of them coincide with those used later by
Rainolds at Oxford. Calvin’s objection, based on Deutero-
nomy, to the wearing of women’s clothes by boys makes its
appearance.* The condemnations of histriones by the Fathers
and by the austerer pagans are applied without discrimination
to their Elizabethan successors, and there is a deliberate
attempt to brand these alike with the Roman note of infamia
and with the more recent stigma of vagabondage. The
historical disquisitions lay much stress on the origin of pagan
plays in idolatry. Gosson, who in his second book affects
a methodical treatment of the subject, and draws upon his
recollection of Aristotle for analysis of the efficient, material,
formal, final causes and effects of plays, justifies himself from
Tertullian in finding the efficient cause of plays in none other
than the incarnate Devil.* He also derives from Aristotle,
although he knew less of Aristotle than did John Case,
a theory that acting, being essentially the simulation of what
is not, is by its very nature ‘ with in the compasse of a lye,
which by Aristotles judgment is naught of it selfe and to be
fledde * A A similar doctrine is readily applied to the imagina-
tions of poets which give actors their opportunity.® As
Touchstone puts it, poetry is not ‘ honest in deed and word ’
nor ‘ a true thing *, for ‘ the truest poetry is the most feigning

‘ Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 18.

* Gosson, P. C. 195. 3 Gosson, P. C. i(>9. * Gosson, P. C, 197.

‘Gosson, P. C. 188 ; Munday, 145. ^ A. Y, L. iii. iii. 17.

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 255

Whatever weight such abstract reasonings may have carried,
they were after all but the fringes and trimmings of the con*
troversy. The main burden of the complaints raised by the
Puritans rested neither on theology nor on history, but on
the character of the London plays as they knew them, and on
the actual conditions under which representations were given.
In a stage from which Protestant polemic was now banned,
they found nothing but scurrUitas. They resented the im-
purity of speech and gesture. They resented the scoffs at
virtue and religion, especially when these were interlaced
with themes taken, as dramatic themes were still often taken,
from the Scriptures.^ And their disapproval was hardly less
when the plays were wholly secular, for in tragedies they
could discern nothing but examples to honest citizens of
murders, treacheries, and rebellions, and in comedies nothing
but demoralizing pictures of intrigues and wantonness. Plays,
they declared, are the snares of the devil set to catch souls.
By plays the imagination of youth is corrupted, and matronly
chastity first turned to thoughts of sin. With their ready
touch upon vituperative rhetoric, they found for the theatre
a string of nicknames of which Gosson’s ‘ the school of abuse *
was the model, and ‘ the school of bawdery ’, ‘ the nest of
the devil ’, ‘ the consultorie of Satan ’, may serve as further
samples. And what the plays began, they held that the
surroundings of the playhouses were only too well adapted
to finish. In them was focused all the sin of the city. Here
men came, not merely to waste their time and their money,
but to meet wantons, and to whisper dishonourable proposals
in the ears of any respectable women with whom they found
themselves in company. The constant presence of harlots
amongst the audience, the dallying with them in the front
of the galleries, the manning of them home afterwards, even
if the buildings adjacent to the stage did not themselves
afford a convenient shelter for ill-doing, are dwelt upon with
a vigour of description which perhaps testifies to the horror
wherewith this connexion of the stage with sexual immorality
had affected the Puritan mind.^

Above all, there was Sabbatarianism to be taken into
account. During the earlier part of Elizabeth’s reign, Sunday
was the usual day for plays. The trumpets blew for the
performances just as the bells were tolling for afternoon
prayer ; and writer after writer bears testimony to the fact
that too often the yards and galleries were filled with an
appreciative crowd, while the preacher’s sermon was unfre-

> Northbrooke, 92 ; Munday, 144 ; Stubbes, 140.

* Gosson, S. A, 35 ; P. C. 215 ; Munday, 139.

256 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

quented.' TTius a touch of professional amour propre gave
its sting to the conflict, and there is no one point that is
more insisted upon in sermon after sermon and pamphlet
after pamphlet than the desecration of the Lord’s Day which
the attendance at theatres directly entailed. The preachers
did not disdain an appeal to popular superstitions which they
probably themselves shared, and the visitations of plague
from which Elizabethan London regularly suffered,* no less
than such events as earthquakes * or the fall of ruinous
buildings,^ were interpreted as tokens of divine wrath at the
wickedness of plays and in particular at the breach of the
Fourth Commandment. A curious legend was whispered
abroad in various forms, to the effect that the devil himself
had been known on occasion to take an unrehearsed part in
this or that godless piece.®

The playwright, no less than the theologian, has a ready
pen, and the Puritan attacks naturally provoked a counter-
literature of apology. This first took shape in critical prefaces
attached to such contemporary plays, mainly of literary
rather than stage origin, as reached the honours of print.*
Gosson’s Schoole of Abuse, a treacherous performance from
the point of view of his former colleagues, called for a more
elaborate reply. More than one pamphlet was written, of
which the Honest Excuses {c. 1579) of Thomas Lodge has
alone come down to us. The serious argument of this, as
well as of the prefaces which preceded it, continues the main
humanist tradition. Against the denunciations of the Fathers
and of certain pagan moralists, the apologists set the antiquity
of plays and the honour in which after all they were held in
the palmy days of Greece and Rome. The examples of
violence and wantonness in tragedy and comedy they justify
by the moral end of drama. Decorum — the literary sense of

‘ Northbrooke, 92 ; Stockwood, 23 ; Munday, 128 ; Field, Epistle.

* White, 46 ; Gosson, P. C. 215.

* Stubb^, 180, speaks of serious accidents at theatres due to panic at
an earthquake, which must be that of 6 April 1 580 ; but the account
published at the time (cf. App, C, No. xxv) makes no reference to theatres,
although it does, oddiy enough, record that the only deaths were those
of two children who were listening to a sermon in Christ Church,
Newgate.

* The fall of the Paris Garden bear-baiting house on 13 January 1583
led John Field, in his A Godly Exhortation (1583) on that event, which is
closely related to the anti-stage literature, to anticipate a similar fate for
the theatres. The Puritans should have taken to heart the wise comment
of Sir Thomas More on a similar occasion (cf. ch. xvi, s.v. Hope).

^ Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Marlowe, Dr. Faustus.

* Cf. App. C, Nos. iv, ix, x, xiv, xix. Something might be added from
the prefaces of the Senecan translators (cf. ch. xxiii).

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 257

what is psychologically appropriate to a given character —
requires that, as George Whetstone puts it, * grave old men
should instruct, yonge men should show the imperfections of
youth, strumpets should be lascivious, boyes unhappy, and
clownes should be disorderly *. But whether the action be
merry or mournful, grave or lascivious, the ultimate object
is edification, even as the bee sucks honey from flowers and
weeds alike. * By the rewarde of the good, the good are
encowraged in well doinge ; and with the scowrge of the
lewde, the lewde are feared from evil attempts.* Comedy,
no doubt, aims at delight, but it is a delight which, on the
Horatian principle, is mingled with the useful. This appears
to have been the especial theme of the Play of Plays and
Pastimes^ in which the actors essayed their own defence on
the boards of the Theatre. Unfortunately this piece is only
known by Gosson’s unfriendly account of its plot in Playes
Confuted.^ It was in the form of an allegorical morality, in
which was shown the dependence of Life on Delight and
Recreation as a protection from Glut and Tediousness, and
how Zeal, in order to govern Life aright, must be reduced to
Moderate Zeal and work hand in hand with Delight, using
comedies for which it is prescribed ‘ that the matter be
purged, deformities blazed, sinne rebuked, honest mirth inter-
mingled, and fitte time for the hearing of the same appointed *.
It is the note of humanism, again, which is prominent in the
group of critical writings of which the first and most important
is Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poetry {c. 1583) It is reason-
able to suppose that this treatise had its origin in the train of
ideas awakened by the Puritan outcries. Gosson had dedicated
The Schoole of Abiise to Sidney, and as Gabriel Harvey told
Spenser, was ‘ for hys labor scorned ; if at leaste it be in the
goodnesse of that nature to scorne ’. Certainly the Defence
can hardly be regarded as a direct contribution to the con-
troversy. Sidney was not particularly concerned to uphold
the contemporary stage, and occupied himself rather with
answering a general attack upon poetry contained in The
Schoole of AbusCy which had been merely incidental to Gosson’s
principal argument. But in the course of his discussion he
comes to examine tragedy and comedy as branches of imagi-
native literature, and the definitions which he frames are
conceived once more in the full spirit of humanism. He
speaks of * high and excellent tragedy, that openeth the
greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered
with tissue ; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants and tyrants
manifest their tyrannical humors ; that with stirring the
* Gosson, P. C. 201.

S

22291

258 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

effects of admiration and commiseration teacheth the uncer-
tainty of this world, and upon how weak foundations gilden
roofs are builded *. So, too, the work of the comic poet is
* an imitation of the common errors of our life which he
representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that
may be, so as it is impossible that any beholder can be con-
tent to be such a one *. The Defence was not published until
^595) but it must have been well known in private before
that, since, itself founded on such Italian writers as Scaliger,
Minturno, and Castelvetro, it in turn furnished inspiration
for William Webbe’s Discourse of English Poesie (1586),
Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (1589), and Sir John
Harington’s Apologie of Poetrie (1591). All these three writers
emphasize the moral lessons of tragedy and comedy on the
familiar humanist lines.

It must be admitted that the humanist theory was not
altogether conclusive as an answer to the Puritans. These
were not prepared to accept the authority of Horace as
making delight, even in conjunction with the useful, a legiti-
mate end, when, as they pointed out, the delight was a carnal
and not a spiritual one.^ Nor could the arguments in favour
of decorum, which were wholly of a literary and not an ethical
nature, be expected to appeal to them. And as to the moral
lessons to be learned by witnessing plays, whether tragedies
or comedies, they were entirely sceptical. They return again
and again, with obvious irritation, to the probably mythical
story of a good woman who swore by her troth that she had
been as much edified at a play as at any sermon.^

If, says Northbrooke, you will leame howe to bee false and deceyue
your husbandes, or husbandes their wyues, howe to playe the harlottes,
to obtayne ones loue, howe to rauishe, howe to beguyle, howe to betraye,
to flatter, lye, sweare, forsweare, howe to allure to whoredome, howe
to murther, howe to poyson, howe to disobey and rebell against
princes, to consume treasures prodigally, to mooue to lustes, to ransacke
and spoyle cities and townes, to bee ydle, to blaspheme, to sing fllthie
songes of loue, to speake filthily, to be prowde, howe to mocke, scoffe
and deryde any nation . . . shall not you leame, then, at such enterludes
howe to practise them.^

And if sometimes notorious evil-doers are held up to reproba-
tion on the stage, it seems to the preachers that such rebuke
might more suitably come from the pulpit, since in a theatre
the appeal must needs be made to an audience hardly fit to
be judges in any man’s cause.^ Gosson aijd Munday, having

‘ Gosson, P. C. 203.

* Northbrooke, 92; Munday, 139; Stubbes, 143.

^ Northbrooke, 92 ; cf. Stubbes, 144. < Munday, 150.

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 259

been playwrights, and having presumably suffered at the
hands of their masters, pay off old scores with another argu-
ment. If plays had really a moral influence, would not this
be apparent in the lives of those who are most conversant
with them, the players themselves. Yet the players are not
only extremely insolent and swaggering persons, but notori-
ously practise in real life the very vices which they represent
on the stage. Moreover, they take young boys and bring
them up in shamelessness. How can it be expected that good
shall be done, where there is no will in the agent to do good ? ^
The inconclusiveness of the discussion was of course largely
due to the fact that the Puritan and the humanist disputants
were not talking about quite the same thing. Obviously the
influence of a play, if any, upon conduct must depend on the
manner of handling and on the dramatic idea involved ; and
it may be taken for granted that the ideal comedy and
tragedy, which the humanists praised and which some of
them tried to realize, were often very imperfectly represented
by the actual pieces put before a London audience. This is
to some extent admitted on both sides. Sidney is frankly
contemptuous of the popular stage. Whetstone speaks of his
* commendable exercise ’ as ‘ discredited with the tryfels of
yonge, unadvised, and rashe witted wryters ’. Lodge and
the author of The Play of Plays are fully conscious of abuses,
which must be remedied if the drama is to take the place
assigned to it in the humanist scheme of things. On the
other hand, Gosson is fair-minded enough to admit that
certain plays, principally his own, are beyond reproach ; and
even that, as compared with an earlier period than that of
which he wrote, there had been some purging of the language
used on the boards.^ Yet, when all allowance has been made
on this score, it would seem that there must still remain
some fundamental incompatibility between the views of the
Puritans and those of the humanists as regards the psycho-
logical effects of the drama upon conduct. Perhaps this is
hardly to be wondered at After all, the psychological effect
of a drama, or of any other work of art, is not a simple thing,
but depends upon an incalculable relation between what the
artist puts into his work and what the spectator brings to
the contemplation of it. And it may fairly be assumed that
what a Sidney brought and what a limb of Limehouse brought
were sufficiently different things. Were this a philosophic
work on the drama and not merely a history of the stage,
it might be appropriate to dwell upon the fact that, however
much the Puritans and the humanists might disagree, they
i Gosson, P. C. 182 ; Monday. 147. * Gosson. S. A. 37.

26 o the control of THE STAGE

were at one in referring their judgement of the drama to
purely ethical standards of value, and that the conception
of aesthetic value, which means so much for modern thought,
was in the main beyond the scope of Elizabethan criticism.

So far as the character of the particular plays put on the
stage was material, the case for the defence grew stronger as
these approached more nearly to literature. Thus Thomas
Nashe, whose Pierce Penilesse His Supplication (1592) con-
tains by far the most effective of the apologies for the drama
from a popular point of view, is in a position, not only to
vaunt the respectability of English actors as compared with
the ‘ squirting baudie comedians * of beyond the seas, to
repudiate the idea that rowdy apprentices were wanted in
the theatres at all, and to claim a distinct superiority for
play-going over gaming, whoreing and drinking as a pastime
for courtiers and other idle men ; but also to give point to
his glorification of the moral purpose of tragedy and comedy
by a special reference to the chronicle plays then at the height
of their success, ‘ wherein our forefathers valiant acts, that
haue line long buried in rustic brasse and worme-eaten bookes,
are reuiued, and they themselues raised from the graue of
obliuion, and brought to pleade their aged honours in open
presence ; than which, what can be a sharper reproofe to
these degenerate, effeminate dayes of ours ? * Nashe can even
illustrate his contention from the Talbot scenes of Shake-
speare’s I Henry VI; and it is indeed the ultimate paradox
of the Puritan controversy that a movement, which was
undoubtedly designed in the interests of honest and clean
living, would have had the result, if it had been successful,
of shutting out the world from the possibilities of a Shake-
speare. n

After the publication of the Anatomie of Abuses in 1583
there was some slackening in the literary warfare carried on
by the Puritans, The duty of abstinence from plays becomes
a commonplace of treatises on morals and devotion, and
the preachers continue to complain, but the only specialist
pamphlet during the next quarter of a century is the com-
paratively unimportant Mirrour of Monsters (1587) by another
cast playwright, William Rankins. It must be doubtful
whether this was due to any decrease in the strength of the
sentiment against the stage. But the trial of forces was
over, and for a time there was little further advance to be
made. Something, as will be seen in the next chapter, had
been won, so far as the observance of Sunday was concerned ;
on the other hand, the main issue had been pretty definitely
lost. Moreover, there were other things to be thought of ;

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM

261

firstly the Martin Marprelate controversy, which for a while
absorbed much ink and paper, and secondly, the persecution
which recusants had to undergo at the hands of the dominant
party in Church and State. Aggressive at the beginning of
Elizabeth*s reign, by its close Puritanism had to stand on
its defence. A corresponding change in its relations with the
stage was inevitable. From an assailant, it became an object
of assault. The players had never been disposed to endure
criticism without hitting back. Lewis Wager, as early as
1566, has his word against the hypocrites, who slander plays
from fear lest their own wickedness should be revealed in
public ; and one may be sure that the actor’s side of the
question was as remorselessly pressed from the scaffold as
that of the Puritan from the pulpit. This tendency can only
have gathered impetus from the official encouragement given
for a time to the players to intervene against Martin Mar-
prelate.^ The tone of the later apologists for the stage has
become insolent rather than deprecatory. Nashe, always ready
to carry any war into the enemy’s quarter, boldly ascribes
the attacks upon plays to the envy felt by vintners, alewives,
and victuallers for more respectable places of entertainment
than their own, and to the indifference to greatness of avari-
cious citizens, who * know when they are dead they shall not
be brought upon the stage for any goodness, but in a merri-
ment of the Usurer and the Diuel, or buying Armes of the
Herald *. So, too, Henry Chettle, in his Kind-Harts Dr came
(1592), puts into the mouth of the ghost of Tarleton, not
only the usual serious defence of the moral value of plays
and an appeal to the youth of the city not to disturb the
peace of the theatres, but also a mock protest from the keepers
of bowling-alleys, dicing-houses, and brothels against the com-
petition of actors with their trades, and the discovery in jig
and jest of ‘ our crosse-biting, our conny-catching, our traines,
our traps, our gins, our snares, our subtilties ’. Nashe and
Chettle are perhaps tilting rather at some of the civic allies
of the Puritans, than at the Puritans themselves. But the
latter had to bear their full share of the stage’s revengeful
triumph. The printer of TIC Overthrow of Stage Playes in
1599 notes in his preface how aome * haue not bene afraied
of late dayes to bring vpon the stage the very sober counte-
nances, graue attire, modest and matronelike gestures &
speaches of men & women to be laughed at as a scorne and
reproch to the world *. A detailed analysis of the satire of
Puritanism in later Elizabethan and in Jacobean comedy
would pass beyond the limits of this study. For a sample
^ Cf. ch. ix and App. C, No. xl.

262 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

may be taken the figure of Rabbi Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in
Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614). Busy has a scruple against
eating pig at the fair, ‘ for the very calling it a Bartholmew^
2ind to eat it so, is a spice of Idolatry^ and you make
the Fayrey no better than one of the high Places \ But the
lust of the flesh overcomes him, and he eats ‘ two and a half
to his share ’ and drinks ‘ a pailefull *. This, however, does
not dispose him to be lenient to the pride of the eyes at the
fair. He condemns a doll with ‘ See you not Goldylocks,
the purple strumpet, there ? in her yellow gowne, and greene
sleeues ? * and pulls down a pile of gingerbread cakes as ‘ this
idolatrous groue of images, this flasket of idols Naturally,
his extreme wrath is against the puppet, which he calls Dagon,
and ‘ a beame in the eye of the brethren ; a very great beame,
an exceeding great beame ; such as are your Stage-playerSy
RimerSy and Morrise-dancerSy who have walked hand in hand,
in contempt of the BrethreUy and the Cause \ He disputes
with the puppet, and produces the ‘ old stale argument * of
the male putting on the apparel of the female and the female
of the male, and is finally refuted when the puppet ‘ takes
up his garment *, and reveals that it has no sex.^

When Puritanism gathered head again under James, it was
the sting of caricature which directly led to the renewal of
the old controversy. Two hypocrites in The Puritan [c. 1606)
had been christened after the churches of St. Antholin and
St. Mary Overies, which were known to be the principal
centres in London of Puritan faith and practice. William
Crashaw, the father of the poet, protested in a sermon at
Paul’s Cross. Two years later, he again rebuked the players
for their opposition to the Virginian expedition, which he
declared to be due to pique at the godly determination of
the adventurers to take no company to their plantation.
There were other ‘ seditious sectists ’ at work, and a leading
actor of the Queen’s men, who was also a prolific dramatist,
Thomas Heywood, took up the cudgels for his ‘ quality ’
against these ‘ over-curious heads ’ in an elaborate Apology
for Actors, which must have been written about 1608, but
was not published until 1612. This resumes, effectively
enough, most of the arguments both of the humanists and
of popular disputants such as Nashe, but does not contribute
anything very novel upon a subject as to which, indeed,
little novel remained to be said, with the exception of a

* B. Fair, i. 2, 3, 6 ; iii. 2, 6 ; iv. 1, 6 ; v. 5 ; cf. Jonson's Epigr. Ixxv,
On Lippe the Teacher. I suppose that the treatise on the question of sex-
apparel which Selden sent to Jonson in 1616 (App. C, No. Ixii) was meant
to furnish annotations for B, Fair,

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 263

reminder to the preachers that, whatever the Fathers may
have thought about the Roman Ivdi^ nothing had been said
against them by either Christ or his Apostles.^ Heywood
dwells, of course, upon the established position to which by
his time actors had attained in the favour both of English
and of foreign sovereigns. But he is not blind to the abuses
of his profession, and while lauding many of his fellows as
men ‘ of substance, of government, of sober lives and tem-
perate carriages, house-keepers, and contributory to all duties
enjoyned them *, regrets the licentiousness of others, as well
as a growing tendency to inveigh upon the stage both against
‘ the state, the court, the law, the citty and against ‘ private
men’s humors ’.2 Heywood was answered by one I. G. in
A Refutation of the Apologia for Actors (1615), which in its
turn covered much ground already trod ; and a year later
another actor, Nathan Field, was moved to a Remonstrance
by some personal attacks levelled at himself and the rest of
the King’s men by Thomas Sutton, minister of St. Mary
Overies. This brings us to the limit of the Shakespearian
period, and in the distance still lie the final and portentous
presentation of the whole Puritan case in Piymne’s Hisirio-
mastix (1633), the closing of the theatres by the Long Parlia-
ment, and the reaction of the Restoration under which men
looked back to the stage of James and Charles as a model
of decency and order.^

There is one clear heritage of English Puritanism from the
Genevan theocracy, and that is the claim of the ministers, not
only to direct the consciences of their flocks, but also to call
upon the municipal authorities to put down with the might
of the secular arm whatever in the life of the community did
not conform to the religious and ethical standards which they
preached. Most of the sermons and pamphlets of 1576-83
are quite deliberately addressed to the ‘ magistrate ’, with
a view to the exercise of the regulative powers conferred by
the proclamation of 1559 and the statute of 1572 for the
remedy of the abuses of playhouses, and if possible to the
complete suppression of playing. The City fathers, although
Gosson railed against their ‘ sleepiness ’, were by no means
deaf to these appeals.^ Many of them had themselves adopted
Puritanic principles. And apart from strictly religious con-
siderations, they had their own reasons for looking with
disfavour upon plays. They were husbands and employers,
and their wives and apprentices wasted both time and money
in gadding abroad to theatres, at a risk to their virtue and

* Heywood, 24. * Heywood, 43, 61.

* Cf. App. J. ^ GoMon, P, C. 21 1.

264 the control OF THE STAGE

even their honesty. They were dignitaries, and were not
invariably treated with respect upon the boards. They were
the health authority, and even if plays did not stir the divine
wrath to send a plague or an earthquake, the crowded
assemblies certainly helped to spread infection, and the
rickety structures brought hazard to life and limb.^ They
were responsible for the maintenance of law and order, and
plays were not only the occasions for frays and riots, but
also brought bad characters together, and were suspected of
affording secret opportunities for the hatching of sedition.
It must be borne in mind that, so far as the external abuses
of theatres go, the complaints of their bitterest enemies are
fairly well supported by independent evidence. The presence
of improper persons in the theatres is amply testified to by
the satirists, and by references in the plays themselves.*
Intrigues and other nefarious transactions were carried on
there * ; and careful mothers, such as Lady Bacon, anxiously
entreated their sons to choose more salutary neighbourhoods
for their lodgings.^ Some serious disturbances of the peace
of which theatres were the centres will require attention in
the next chapter, while law-court and other records preserve
the memory of both grave crimes and minor misdemeanours
of which they were the scenes.® Like the bawdy-houses, they

‘ Hcnslowe, i. 136, records a pa)mient of 105. by the Admirars in May
1601, * to geatte the boye into the ospetalle which was hurt at the For-
tewne At St. James. ClerkenweU, was buried on 26 May 1613 (Harl.
Soc. xvii. 123) * John Brittine y* was killed with a fall in the Pley howse *.
There was a shooting accident also in an Admiral's play of 1 587 ; cf. ch. xiii.

* Cf. ch. xviii.

* One of the charges brought against the Venetian ambassador Foscarini
on his return to Venice in 1616 was that he had tried to seduce the penitent
of an English religious attached to the embassy, ‘ sometimes attending
the public comedies and standing among the people on the chance of
seeing her' (Venetian Papers, xiv. 593). About 1594 a diamond stolen
from the loot of a Spanish carrack was bought by some goldsmiths from
a mariner whom they met by chance * at a play in the theatre at Shore-
ditch and who afterwards showed them the diamond in Finsbury Fields
(Cedi Papers, vii. 504).

* Cf. ch. xvi, s.v. Bull.

* In Sinheley, 610, the hero owes the bailiff of Finsbury, * for fra3rs and
bloodshed in &e Theatre fields, five marks *. The Middlesex justices had
to deal with cases of stealing a purse at the Curtain in 1600, of a * notable
outrage ' at the Red Bull in 1610, of abusing gentlemen at the Fortune
in 1611, of stealing a purse at the Red Bull in 1613, and of stabbing at
the Fortune in 1613 (Middlesex County Records, i. 205, 217, 259 ; ii. xlvii,
64, 71, 86, 88). On 7 July 1602 James wrote from Scotland to one James
Hudson to intercede with the Council for John Henslay or Henchelawe
of Grimsby, who was assaulted by Nicholas Blinstoun or Blunston at
a play about the previous Whitsunday (23 May), and slew him (Scottish
Papers, ii. 815 ; Hatfield MSS, xii. 363). Dekker (ii. 326), in Jests to

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 265

appear to have been at the mercy of the traditional rowdiness
of the prentices on Shrove Tuesday.^

On divers grounds therefore the Corporation of London
seem to have reached the conclusion, about 1582 if not before,
that the only way to reform the theatres was to end them.
Probably they were influenced by the views of some of their
permanent officials, of whom Thomas Norton, Remembrancer
from 1571 to 1584, although himself a part-author of the
tragedy of Gorboduc^ and William Fleetwood, Recorder from
1571 to 1594, are known to have been determined opponents
of the stage. The voluminous reports on city affairs, which
Fleetwood was in the habit of sending to Lord Burghley, add
much to our knowledge of a critical period.^ Had the matter
rested wholly with the Corporation, the policy of prohibition

Make you Merrie (1607), gives the private playhouse as the habitat of
the * foist ’ or pickpocket, and says. * The times when his skirmishes are
hottest, or y« time when they run attilt, is ... a new play '. Again
(iii. 158), in The Belman of London (1608), he tells us that rogues haunt
playhouses, and (iii. 212) in Lanthorne and Candlelight (1609), ‘A foyst
nor a nip shall not walke into a fayre or a Play-house, but euerie cracke
will cry looke to your purses '.

^ Divers persons were slain and others hurt and wounded in an attempt
to pull down the Cockpit in Drury Lane on Shrove Tuesday 1617 (Af . 5 . C.
i. 374) ; c£. Camden, Annales (4 March 1617), * Theatrum ludionum nuper
crectum in Drury-Lane a furente multitudine diruitur, et apparatus dila-
ceratur*; John Taylor, Jack a Lent (1620, ed. Hindley), * Put play
houses to the sack and bawdy houses to the spoil * ; The Ovules Almanack
(1618), 9, * Shroue-tuesday falls on that day, on which the prentices
plucked downe the cocke-pit, and on which they did alwayes vse to rifle
Madam Leakes house, at the vpper end of Shot ditch This was not
Puritanism, but a traditional Saturnalia of apprentices at Shrovetide ;
cf. Earle, Microcosmography, char. 64 (A Player), ‘ Shrove-tuesday he
feares as much as the bawdes * ; Busino, Anglopotrida (1618, V. P, xv. 246),
describing the bands of prentices, $.000 or 4,000 strong, who on Shrove
Tuesday and 1 May do outrages in all directions, especially the suburbs,
where they destroy houses of correction ; E. Gayton, Festivous Notes upon
Don Quixote (1654), 271, * I have known upon one of these festivals, but
especially at Shrove- tide, where the players have been appointed, not-
withstanding their bills to the contrary, to act what the major part of
the company had a mind to. Sometimes Tamerlane, sometimes Juguriha,
sometimes The Jew of Malta, and sometimes parts of all these ; and at
last, none of the three taking, they were forced to undress and put ofl
their tragick habits, and conclude the day with The Merry Milkmaides,
And unless this were done, and the popular humour satisfied (as sometimes
it so fortun'd that the players were refractory), the benches, the tiles,
the laths, the stones, oranges, apples, nuts, flew about most liberally ;
and as there were mechanicks of all professions, who fell every one to his
trade, and dissolved a house in an instant, and made a ruin of a stately
fabric

* Most of these letters are printed in Wright, Elii. ; a few are still un-
printed among the Lansdowne and Hatfield MSS. ; cf. App. D, Nos. xxxv,
xxxvii, IxxiV.

266 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

would doubtless have been brought into effective operation.
But it did not rest wholly with them. Not only were the
most important theatres, from 1576, outside the limits of
their jurisdiction, but also account had to be taken of an
authority greater even than that of the City of London, the
authority, ill-defined but imperative, of the Privy Council.
And the Privy Council was, as a rule, swayed by principles
and personalities by no means enamoured of prohibition. Of
this the anti-stage pamphleteers show themselves fully con-
scious. Gosson, addressing his Schoole of Abuse to the Lord
Mayor for the time being, acknowledges the difficulties which
the ‘ letters of commendations ’ held by the companies put
in the way of reform, and laments that players share the
natures of the cuttle-fish and the torpedo, so that ‘ how many
nets so euer ther be layde to take them, or hookes to choke
them, they haue ynke in their bowels to darken the water,
and sleights in their budgets, to dry up the arme of euery
magistrate In Playes Confuted^ he prayed for * some noble
Scipio in the courte ’ to drive the ‘ daunsing chaplines of
Bacchus * out of England, and in a prefatory epistle to
Sir Francis Walsingham he declared that the cleansing of the
Augean stable was only possible for ‘ some Hercules in the
court, whom the roare of the enimy can never daunt No
doubt he hoped that the combined functions of a Scipio and
of a Hercules would be undertaken by Walsingham himself.^
Anthony Munday is even more explicit. He urges the city
not to be daunted by * particular men of auctoritie ’, and
inveighs against the nobility who * restraine the magistrates
from executing their office *, in order to pleasure servants
whom they are unwilling to maintain themselves, and therefore
license to roam throughout the country, publishing their
‘ mametree * in every temple of God, and begging alms in
their masters* names from house to house.^ The Council,
however, were by no means disposed to give the City a free
hand, and with themselves the policy of prohibition made
little headway. They had, indeed, to reconcile conflicting
considerations. They too, like the Lord Mayor and Aldermen,
feared the opportunities for riots and seditions which the
theatres afforded ; ^ and the danger of the spread of plague
was their constant preoccupation. Moreover, they were
especially concerned to see that the players did not touch
upon matters of state or religion, and to visit with sljarp

‘ Gosson, S,A, 56; P. C. Epistle, 178. * Munday, 128.

* Occasionally players were of use as spies. On 30 March 1^3 four
players gave information of an alleged proclamation of Lord Beauchamp
as king by Lord Southampton (Hist. MSS. xiii. 4. 126).

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM 267

chastisement any offences in these directions. They fre-
quently, therefore, thought it well to intervene with temporary
inhibitions of plays, particularly during hot summers when
the anticipations of plague were at their greatest. But they
were never prepared to assent to the chronic request of the
City that these inhibitions should be made permanent. After
all, the people must have their recreation, and, what was more,
the Queen must have hers.' And if her majesty’s ‘ solace *
at Christmas was to be provided upon economical terms, it was
necessary that the players should be allowed facilities for
* exercise ’, and incidentally for earning their living, through
public performances.* In a sense, therefore, it was really the
Court play which saved the popular stage, and enabled the
companies to establish themselves in a position which neither
preachers nor aldermen could shake. One may suppose that
the members of the Privy Council did not all quite see eye to
eye on the theatrical question ; and there were occasional
fluctuations of policy which caused alarm in the tiring-rooms.
Even in the high quarters where the natural attitude to the
drama was that of humanism, Puritan sympathies were some-
times to be found. Leicester, indeed, who frequently curried
favour with the Puritans, failed them in this respect, as may be
seen from a letter written in 1581 by John Field, minister of
the word of God, and author of an Exhortation on the fall of
Paris Garden, in which he rebukes Leicester for his patronage
of plays ‘ to the great greife of all the godly Burghley may
have been personally inclined to the views of his friend and
correspondent William Fleetwood, although even at the end
of his long life he had not forgotten the services of the stage
to his earlier statecraft.^ It was to Walsingham that Gosson

* Cf. App. D, Nos. xl, liii, Iviii, Ixxi, Ixxin, Ixxv, Ixxxiv, Ixxxv, ci, cxiv.
The notion of the need of the public, as distinct from that of the Queen,
for dramatic recreation gradually makes its appearance (cf. especially
App. D, No. cii) ; but imperial Rome might have taught its lesson of
panem et circenses.

* Taylor, Wit and Mirth (1629, Hazlitt, Jest Books, iii. 62), burlesques
the point of view in a story of the visit of the Queen's ape to Looe in
Cornwall. The showman approached the mayor, who did visit and put
off his hat and made a leg and there was a proclamation, ‘ These are
to will and require you, and every of you, with your wives and families,
that upon the sight hereof, you make your personall appearance before
the Queenes Ape. for it is an Ape of ranke and quality, who is to bee
practised through her Majesties dominions, that by his long expenence
amongst her loving subjects, hee may bee the better enabled to doe her
majesty service hereafter ; and hereof faile you not, as you will answer
the contrary '.

* App. D, No. Uv.

* Hawarde, 48, records that in a Star Chamber case of cozening on
18 June 1596 ‘ The Lord Treasurer would haue those y* make the playes

268 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

looked as a Scipio and a Hercules in the dedication of his
Playes Confuted in 1583, but Gosson was unlucky in his dedica-
tions, and in the following year Walsingham was officially con-
cerned in the formation of the company of Queen’s players.
One would gladly know who was the ‘ notable wise counseller *
dead in 1591, who, according to Sir John Harington, stood up
for the play of The Cards^ against those who thought that it
was * somewhat too plaine I should not be surprised if this
were Walsingham.^ By virtue of their offices, the Lord
Chamberlain and Vice- Chamberlain, who were responsible for
Court entertainments, were almost bound to take the players’
part. But there was a moment of trepidation when Lord
Cobham, who was known to be touched with Puritanism,
succeeded for a few months in 1596 the ‘old lord’, Henry
Lord Hunsdon, on whom the companies had learnt to rely.
There is nothing to show that Elizabeth, beyond holding out
for her ‘ solace ’, took any personal interest in the controversy.
That very irritating document, the Acts of the Privy Council^
which is little more than a letter-book, does not record whether
she was present or not at the Council meetings at which theatri-
cal affairs were discussed. But it must be assumed that the
general attitude of the Council had her concurrence. Cer-
tainly she had no Puritan tendencies, and on the rare occasions
on which her interference can be traced she was acting in the
interests of one or other favoured company.*

to make a comedie hereof, Oc to acte it with these names ' ; cf. p. 244.
In Hatfield MSS, vii. 270 is a * lewd saucy letter ' of 25 June 1597 from
Sir John Hollis to Burghley, who on the last Star Chamber day had
pronounced Hollis's great-grandfather * an abominable usurer, a merchant
of broken paper, so hateful and contemptible a creature that the players
acted him before the King [Henry Vll or VllI] with great applause *. It
is printed in H. Walpole, Royal and Noble Authors (ed. Park, ii. 283).

^ App. C, No. xlv. Was this the Chapel Game of the Cards on 26 Dec.
1 582, or was it the play in which Tarlton (cf. ch. xv) glanced at Raleigh
as the knave commanding the queen ?

* These interventions were the Admiral's men in 1600 and for Oxford's
and Worcester's men in 1602 (cf. App. D, Nos. cxvii, cxxx).

IX

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY

[Bibliographical Note. — Most of the material for the present chapter is
collected in Appendix D. An outline of the subject was given in Tudor
Revels (1906), and it is well and fully treated in V. C. Gildersleeve, Govern*
ment Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama (1908). G. M. G., The Stage
Censor (1908), and F. Fowell and F. Palmer, Censorship in England (1913),
are per^ps more valuable on later periods. Vagabond life and legislation
may be studied in G. NichoUs, History of the English Poor Lati^ (1898),
C. J. Ribton-Tumer, History of Vagrants and Vagrancy (1887), E, M.
Leonard, Early History of English Poor Relief (1900), and F. Aydelotte,
Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (1913). and the working of local govern-
ment in C. A. Beard, The Office of Justice of the Peace in England (1904),
and E. Trotter, Seventeenth Century Life in the Country Parish (1919).]

The foregoing chapter has endeavoured to define the
practical and spiritual forces which underlay the controversy
between Puritanism and the stage ; it remains to study the
working of the constitutional forms through which, as a result-
ant of those forces, the ‘ quality ’ of the player ultimately
established itself as a recognized constituent of the polity.
And first, for the social status of the players. The wittier
Puritans were fond of twitting them, on the ground that,
if all men had their rights, they would count as no better
than vagabonds. There is little more than a verbal truth in
the taunt. No doubt, in certain circumstances, players, like
minstrels before them, might fall within the danger of a series
of statutes which, in the course of formulating the provisions
of a nascent poor-law, attempted also to regulate the wander-
ing elements of society. It was part of the mediaeval concep-
tion of things to assign to every individual a definite function
in the social organism and to expect from him the regular
fulfilment of that function. To such a theory the migratory
beggar and the masterless man were naturally repugnant.
But it was primarily a shortage of labour towards the end
of the fourteenth century which brought about the first
serious endeavour to check vagabondage by legislation, and
to compel the able-bodied vagrant, through the machinery
of local government, to return to the village of his domicile
and there take up again the service which he had abandoned.
This policy was continued and developed by the Tudors. The
principal act which was operative, when Elizabeth came to

270 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

the throne, had been passed under Henry VIII in 1531.
It provided that any able-bodied beggar or idle vagrant,
having no land or master, and using no lawful merchandise,
craft, or mystery for his living, should be brought before
a justice of the peace, or in a corporate town the mayor, who
should see him whipped at the cart-tail, and then, if a beggar,
returned to his place of birth or residence, there to work as
a true man ought to do, or if an idle person but no beggar,
either put to labour or set in the stocks until he found surety
to go to service. This statute was replaced by one of greater
severity in 1547, under which vagabonds were to be branded
and put to forced labour as slaves. But it was revived in
1550 and kept in force by frequent renewals, of which the last
was under Elizabeth herself in 1563. In these Acts there is
no mention by name either of players or of minstrels.^ It
may, however, be assumed that the quality of a player would
no more be regarded than that of a tinker or a pedlar as
a merchandise, craft or mystery, and the fact that some of
the early companies were composed of men for whom playing
had originally been subsidiary to a regular craft would hardly
serve them, after they had obviously deserted that craft
and were travelling abroad to make a living by the arts of
migratory entertainment.^ Their actual safeguard was quite
a different one. By definition the vagabond was a masterless
man, and with the exception of a few bodies of town players,
who probably did not wander far from their settled habita-
tions, the Tudor companies were not masterless. They were
all under the protection of some nobleman or gentleman of
position, as whose * servants ’ they passed, bearing with them,
no doubt, at any rate after this was required by a proclama-
tion of 1554, a ‘ certificate ’ or letter of recommendation as
proof of identity.^ No doubt the relation in the larger companies

‘ Aydelotte, 5^8, misrepresents the Act of 1531 on this point. The
clearest proof that the unprotected player was a vagabond is in a Privy
Council letter of 30 April 1556 to Lord Shrewsbury (Lodge, i. 260), which,
after directing that Sir Francis Leek shall not let his servants travel as
players, adds, * And in case any person shall attempt to set forth these
sort of games or pastimes at any time hereafter, contrary to this order ;
and do wander, for that purpose, abroad in the country ; your Lordship
shall do well to give the Justices of the Peace in charge to see them
apprehended out of hand, and punished as vagabonds, by virtue of the
statute made against loitering and idle persons \

* Cf. App. C, s.vv. Gosson (1582), 215; Cox (1591); App. D, No.
Ixxv (2) (b). An Act of 1552 (5 6* 6 Edw. F/, c. 2 1) required every traveUing
* Pedler, Tynker, or Pety Chapman * to have a licence from two justices
of the shire in which he resided {SiattUes, iv. 155). This was merged in
the Act of 1572 (App. D, No. xxiv), but not formally repealed until
I Jac. /, c. 25, in 1604 {Statutes, iv. 1052).

® Prod, 455 ; of. Dasent, v. 73 ; Machyn, 69.

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 271

of lord and servants was little more than a nominal one.
The strict regulations of Henry VII against retainers who
were not household servants had become relaxed with the
disappearance of the conditions which necessitated them.^
The players would wear a livery or badge, and would do some
courtesy of attendance on festival occasions. The lord
might intervene to help them if they got into an undeserved
difficulty, and would see to it that they did not bring his
name into bad repute. There was no economic dependence ;
the players lived by their earnings, not by wages. But they
were not reckoned as masterless men.

A secure status, however, did not mean complete absence of
control. The players had no free hand to play just when and
where and what they liked. They were subject to certain
conveniences as to times and seasons and localities, to pre-
cautions against breaches of the peace a,nd dangers to public
health and safety. Above all, in a time of political and
ecclesiastical ferment, the sentiments of their plays had to be
such as would stand the scrutiny of a government by no
means tolerant of criticism. On these matters it was not,
except in so far as heresy was constituted by Acts of Uni-
formity and the like, with statutes that they had to deal,
but with the administrative regulations of the local and central
executives. All over the country there were bodies charged
with a general responsibility for public order, public safety,
and public decency, as the Elizabethans conceived it. In
the rural districts there were the justices of the peace, with
powers more considerable than clearly defined ; in the towns
there were mayors and corporations, also acting as justices,
but armed with a further authority derived both from custom
and from charters, and with a very clear intention to use this
authority to the full in the government of their communities.
The regulation of amusements had always been regarded as
falling within the scope of municipal activity, and in the end
it proved a fortunate thing for the players, in London at any
rate, that the central authority found itself driven by the
pressure of circumstances to take over a large measure of
the responsibility for stage control from the hands of the
corporations.

For it need hardly be said that in the Tudor scheme of

‘ Cf. M. S, C. i. 350 ; Aydelotte, 14. Prod. 273 laid down (1545) ' that
noe person of what estate, degree or condicion soever he be, doe in any
wise hereafter name or avowe any man to be his servant, unles he be
his houshold servant, or his bailiffe or keeper, or such other as he may
keepe and retayne by the lawes and statutes of this realme, or be retayned
by the kings maiestys licence ' (Hazlitt, E. D. S. 7). But the laws against
retainers had fallen into desuetude again by 1572 ; cf. App. D, No. xix.

272 THE CONTROL OF TH? STAGE

things the power of the local authorities was an immediate
rather than an ultimate one. Both the justices of the peace
and, for all their charters, the corporations had to reckon
with a considerable and growing measure of central control,
resting upon the royal prerogative, and claiming not merely
to further define, but also in some respects to replace, dispense
with, or override legislative enactments. This development
of regulation from the centre is, of course, an established
feature of sixteenth-century history. It arose out of many
convergent causes, the strength of the monarchy in face of
the great houses weakened by civil contention, the personal
qualities of the Tudor sovereigns, the urgent need of fresh
machinery to deal with problems created by ecclesiastical
changes, by the growth of the press, by the growth of the
stage itself, for which the legal and administrative traditions
of the Middle Ages provided no solution. And if it was largely
unconstitutional and destined ultimately to bring the pre-
rogative to perdition, this did not in the meantime affect the
position of the actor, who would certainly be fined and im-
prisoned if he did not obey, or to any great extent that of the
justices or corporations, who might prove recalcitrant or at
least argumentative, but in the long run found it profitable
to obey also. There were three main avenues through which
the royal prerogative found exercise. The first of these was
the ancient procedure of Chancery. The will of the sovereign
might be expressed in a writ or mandate, directed to the
subject, and stamped for greater solemnity with the impres-
sion of the Great Seal of England. Such a writ was generally
used in granting licences, in conferring offices, or in issuing
commissions to execute functions on behalf of the Crown.
It took the form of letters patent, so called because they were
intended as open communications to all whom they might
concern. These were handed to the recipient after an elaborate
diplomatic process during which they passed successively
under the royal Sign Manual, the Signet, the Privy Seal,
and the Great Seal itself, while a copy was enrolled in the Court
of Chancery, and thus became matter of public record.^

* Scargill-Bird*, 8o ; W. R. Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution,
ii. 1 . 55 ; H. Hall, Studies in English Official Historical Documents, 263 ;
AT. S. C. i. 260. The stages of a patent, as settled by 27 Hen. VIII, c. 1 1
(153s), were (a) a Petition setting out the grant desired, and (h) a direction
by the Sovereign for the preparation of (c) a King's Bill. In this the
wording of the intended patent was settled, and this wording was followed,
with varying initial and final formulae, in the subsequent instruments.
The King's Bill received the royal Sign Manual and became the authority
for the issue by a Clerk to the Signet of (d) a Signet Bill. This was sent
to the Lord Privy Seal, who based upon it (e) a Writ of Privy Seal, which

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 273

Secondly, there was the proclamation. This was in theory
the formal announcement either of an executive act, or of
the royal intention as to the enforcement or interpretation
of a statute. In practice it tended more and more, during
the Tudor period, itself to take the place of a statutory enact-
ment. Proclamations were made by direction of the sovereign
in council, and were enrolled, like the patents, in Chancery.
Both proclamations and, at a comparatively late stage,
patents were made use of in the process of regulating players.
But they were largely supplemented by the third method
through which the royal prerogative expressed itself, namely
that day-by-day activity of the Privy Council in the general
co-ordination and supervision of affairs, which has already
been described.^ The Council Register itself and the local
archives, especially those of London, are full of letters from
head-quarters to justices and corporations, directing them
as to the allowance or irthibition of plays in general, or calling
for special action in cases in which a company of players
had provoked a breach of the peace or had brought them-
selves under suspicion of heresy or sedition. No doubt the
corporations, in particular, would often have preferred to
act upon their own discretion. Sometimes they argued or
protested or deferred compliance. But the Council had
the powers of the Star Chamber behind them ; and if in the
end they resorted to more direct ways of control, this was
probably rather for the sake of avoiding administrative
friction than because they found any ultimate difficulty in
imposing their will by means of correspondence upon reluctant
magistrates.

It was, of course, until plague and Puritanism became
serious preoccupations, with the subject-matter of plays,
rather than the details of times and places, that the central
government mainly concerned itself ; and it was apparently
the disturbed ecclesiastical position of the later years of
Henry VIII that directed attention to the drama as a subject
of state instead of merely local concern. I have dealt else-
where with the encouragement given to controversial inter-
ludes by Cromwell and Cranmer, with the swing of the
pendulum when the controversialists began to apply them-
selves, not merely to points of church government which Henry
desired to alter, but with heresies which he was not prepared

was addressed to the Lord Chancellor, and became in its turn the authority
for the issue of (/) the actual Letters Patent under the Great Seal. These
were handed to the recipient, while the Writ of Privy Seal passed on to
the Six Clerks in Chancery, for {g) an Enrolment of its contents upon the
Patent Roll. ^ Cf. ch; ii.

274 the control OF THE STAGE

to adopt, and with the proclamations and counter-proclama-
tions and the interventions by the Privy Council to which the
problem gave rise under Edward VI and Mary.^ Some
additional material which has more recently been published
throws light upon the regulative functions of the City of
London in particular during 1549 ^ 550 *^ More than

once the prevalence of ‘ lewd ’ and ‘ naughty * plays on this
side or that led to the complete inhibition of all performances
for a season. There is also some trace of a system of licences
for particular companies. It is not clear why Lord Dorset
should have thought it necessary to obtain a special authoriza-
tion from the Council for his men to play in his presence only
in 1551.^ A forged licence taken from some players and sent to
Sir William Cecil in 1552 may perhaps have purported to have
been nothing more than such a certificate from a lord as was
required by the proclamation of 1554.^ Two general conclu-
sions may be drawn from these early records. One is that,
although the local authorities were certainly responsible
for the regulation of plays as a matter of public order, they
were not always in a position to make their control effective
without an appeal to head-quarters. The performances were
popular and the players had inherited from^ the minstrels
a prescriptive right to municipal encouragement and reward,
rather than interference. And if they bore the badge of
some great personage, himself perhaps a privy councillor,
one may be sure that Dogberry and Verges would think
twice before they ventured on a rebuff. Even in London the
Lord Mayor had to appeal to the Privy Council in 1543 to
get certain joiners imprisoned and reprimanded for playing
on a Sunday.® And if this was so in London, where the Lord
Mayor had certainly a firm seat in his saddle, it was naturally
still more so in the county areas, whose looser methods of
government ultimately proved to have a very marked
significance for the history of the London theatres. The

‘ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 216. 2 Qf App. D, Nos. ii-v.

* Dasent, iii. 307.

* S. P. D. Edw. VI, XV. 33. By 5 6* 6 Edw. VI of 1552 (Statutes,
iv. 155) travelling tinkers and pedlars could hold a licence from two
justices of the peace. This arrangement is continued by the Act of 1572
(vide infra), and tinkers and pedlars are there grouped with players.
Possibly therefore such local licences had also been issued to players who
were not * servants even before 1572.

® Dasent, i. 104, 109, no, 122. The nature of the joiners' offence is
clear ; three of those imprisoned were named Hawtrell, Lucke, and Lucas.
They had played * wythowt respect ether off the day or the ordre whiche
was knowen openlye the Kinges Highnes intended to take for repressinge
off playes '. At the same time the Lord Warden’s men were committed
* for playing contrary to an ordre taken by the Mayour '.

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 275

weak position of the Surrey justices, for example, is illustrated
by a letter from Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, to
Sir William Paget, Secretary of State, written on 5 February
1547, shortly after the death of Henry VIII. He asks that
Paget or the Protector will intervene to prevent Lord Oxford’s
men, who have threatened ‘ to try who shall have most resort,
they in game or I in earnest *, from giving a play in Southwark
at the moment when he sings his Dirige for the dead king ; and
he reports that one Master Acton, a justice of the peace, has
attempted to stop the assembly, but the players ‘ smally
regard ’ him, and ‘ press him to a peremptory answer, whether
he dare lett them play or not ; whereunto he answereth neither
yea nor nay as to the playing

The second point is that, although the Privy Council might
intervene to help the magistrates, their own primary interest
at this time was in the exclusion of heresy and sedition
from plays. This shows itself in two ways. Individual plays
are brought before the Council itself, and lead to disci-
plinary measures. But there is also the germ of a censorship.
At first it is exercised through the local authorities. The
London aldermen in 1549 appoint two of the Corporation
officers, known as the Secondaries of the Compters, who are
bound under recognizances to ‘ peruse * plays and report upon
them to the Lord Mayor. But in the following year the
London players themselves are bound only to perform
plays licensed by the King himself or the Privy Council,
and this too is the basis of Edward’s proclamation of 1551
and Mary’s of 1553.^ The former requires a licence ‘ in
writing vnder his maiesties signe, or signed by vj of his
highnes priuie counsail ’ ; the latter ‘ her graces speciall
licence in writynge for the same ’. By 1557, however, another
change has taken place, and the duty of licensing is apparently
delegated to the ecclesiastical authorities, that is to say the
Commissioners for Religion.* These licences are of course
for individual plays, and distinct from any general licences
needed by a company in order to enable it to play at all.

When Elizabeth came to the throne she was perhaps more
able than her predecessor to rely upon the municipalities in

‘ P. F. Tytler, England under the Reigns of Edward VI and Mary, i. 21,
from S. P. D. Edw. VI, i. 5.

* Gildersleeve, 5, points out that I was misled by Collier, i. 119, into
citing the Marian proclamation in Mediaeval Stage, ii. 220, under 1533 as
well as 1553. I regret the error.

* Dasent, vi. 102. The Lord Mayor is to send offending players * to
the Commissioners for Religion to be by them further ordered, and also
to take ordre that no playe be made hencefourthe within the Citie except
the saihe be first seen and allowed and the players aucthorised

276 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

carrying out her ecclesi^tical policy. It is true that the Act of
Uniformity^ like Edward’s before her, forbade any words in
the derogation, depraving or despising of the Book of Common
Prayer, and committed the enforcement of this prohibition
to the ecclesiastical ordinary as well as to the justices of
assize and the civic mayors. It is true also that the general
powers of jurisdiction in cases of sedition given to the High
Commission by the patent of 19 July 1559 are wide enough
to cover ‘ words or showings ’ as well as ‘ books But the
elaborate provisions for a literary censorship under the
Commission contained in the ecclesiastical Injunctions of
the same year extend to printed matter only, and for the
detailed supervision of plays the Government was at first
content to look to the magistrates.^ There seem to have
been two proclamations. The first, which is not extant, is
said to have been made on 7 April 1559 and to have restrained
plays for a stated period. The second, of the following
16 May, was intended as a permanent regulation. After noting
that the usual season for interludes was now over until
I November, and the inconvenience of some recently given,
it goes on to forbid any, whether in public or private, which
have not been licensed by the Mayor in a town, or in a shire
by the Lord Lieutenant or two justices for the immediate
locality. The licensing authorities are enjoined to allow no
handling of matters of religion or state in plays, and the
nobility and gentry are warned to take order that * their
seruantes being players ’ shall respect the proclamation.
It will be observed that only the licensing of plays and not
the status of players was covered. Status was left as the
Act of 1531, which was still in force and wa3 explicitly con-
firmed in 1563, had left it. The position was then as follows.
Players, at any rate when they performed away from home,
must have a licence either from their lord or possibly from
the local magistrates. Whether at home or abroad, they
were subject to the regulation of the magistrates as to
times and places, and the precautions needed to secure
public health and order. In addition, the magistrates had
a special responsibility under the proclamation for allowing
their individual plays, but this, in rural areas where there
were many Justice Shallows, might alternatively be exer-
cised by the Lord Lieutenant for the county as a whole.
It is, I suppose, a licence for their repertory rather than for
their travelling that Lord Robert Dudley asked for his men

^ Cf. ch. xxii and App. D, Nos. ix, xii, xiii. The Commission had also
an authority over vagrants in or near London, which apparently dis-
appeared after the legislation of 1572 {vide infra).

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 277

from the Earl of Shrewsbury, who as President of the North
stood in the place of a Lord Lieutenant for Yorkshire, about
a month after the issue of the proclamation. He calls it,
indeed, a licence to play, but he dwells on the ‘ tollerable
and convenient * character of their pieces, and it is easy to
see how one conception of the purpose for which a licence was
required would slip into another.

The history of play-licensing in London, which must
now be followed in detail, really turns upon an attempt of
the Corporation, goaded by the preachers, to convert their
power of regulating plays into a power of suppressing plays,
as the ultimate result of which even the power of regulation
was lost to them, and the central government, acting through
the Privy Council and the system of patents, with the Master
of the Revels as a licenser, took the supervision of the stage
into its own hands. The issue does not define itself very
clearly until the ’seventies, perhaps partly because the
Puritan sentiment took some time to grow, and partly
because the earlier years are much less fully documented than
the later ones.

As with all narratives pieced together out of fragmentary
records, care must be taken not to lay too much stress on
merely negative evidence with regard to any particular point.
The two chief sources of information are the Register of the
Privy Council, which contains minutes of letters written
to the City Corporation or the Justices of Middlesex and
Surrey and of other action taken by the Council with regard
to plays, and the City Remembrancia^ a book containing
copies of letters passing between the Corporation and the
Council or other persons of importance. But neither record
is continuous during the whole controversy, and although the
two frequently help each other out, some of the gaps unfor-
tunately synchronize. In particular there is a comparative
absence of information upon the first part of the reign,
since the Register only begins to help in 1573 and the Remetn-
brancia in 1580. It is possible, therefore, that the Court and
the City may have come to grips on the vexed question
of stage-control in London somewhat earlier than is now
apparent.

It is certain, indeed, that some negotiations had taken place
between the two authorities before the period to which the
documents mainly relate. These are appealed to in a City
letter of 1574, and it is claimed that, in view of the objections
of the Corporation, the Council had ‘ long since ’ refrained
from pressing a proposal that some private person should
be nominated to license playing-places within the City.

278 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

This is the first mention of a new type of ‘ licence *, distinct
from those of companies as such, or of plays as such, and
presumably owing its origin to the general local regulative
powers of the magistrates. The date of the proposal is not
given, and as regards the years 1558-71, there is only occasional
evidence of any serious interference, other than such as was
necessitated by plague, with the activities of the players,
although it is clear that the rulers of the City were exercising
the powers of Supervision with which the proclamation of
1559 invested them. There is an indication that plays were
suspended by a precept from the Lord Mayor in the September
of the first and greatest of the Elizabethan plague-years,
1563 ; and in the following February Edmund Grindal, the
Bishop of London, wrote to Sir William Cecil, pointing out
that the players set up their bills daily, and especially on
holidays, and that the excessive resort of young people to
their performances could only be a cause of infection. Both
on religious and on hygienic grounds, he urged the desirability
of inhibiting plays by proclamation, either permanently or
at least for a complete year, and not only within the City,
but for a circuit of three miles outside its boundaries. Penalties
should, he thought, be imposed for disobedience, not only
upon the players, but also upon the owners of the houses
where they played. The cessation of the plague probably
made it unnecessary for Cecil to entertain the suggestion
seriously ; but it is interesting to observe that the policy
of the Puritans, with whom Grindal was in sympathy, was
already in 1564 one of complete suppression, and also that
the comparative inefficacy of measures limited to the City,
in view of the populous suburbs outside the London jurisdic-
tion and subject only to the Middlesex or Surrey Justices and
to the Privy Council, had been already realized.

During the next few years there is little to record, although
if The Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipty alleged to have
been printed in 1569, were ever recovered, it might throw
more light upon the growing flood of Puritan sentiment
than is afforded by Warton’s scanty quotations. There
was some plague in each of the three years 1568, 1569, and
1570, and in the summer of 1569 the City suspended plays,
as a precautionary measure, from the last day of May to the
last day of September. There was another suspension
on 27 November 1571, for which plague is not alleged as a
reason, but a few days later the Corporation appear to have
changed their minds and licences were issued during this
winter for performances by Leicester’s and Abergavenny’s
men.

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 11 ^

The year 1572 is marked by two measures of government,
each of which had its reaction on the status of players through-
out the country. The first entailed some regularization of
the position of noblemen’s companies. The fifteenth-century
struggle between the power of the Crown and that of the
great feudal houses had led to enactments forbidding subjects
to attach to themselves, by the giving and taking of a livery
or badge, retainers who were not in some bona-fide sense their
own household servants or officers. The Acts against retainers
had been continued up to the reign of Henry VII, who had
confirmed them in 1487 ; and had then, upon the firm
establishment of the royal supremacy by the Tudors, largely
fallen into desuetude, in spite of a proclamation of 1545,
already noticed, which was intended to call renewed attention
to them. They were, however, still technically operative,
and a proclamation of 3 January 1572 announced an inten-
tion to enforce them from the following 20 February. Their
relation to the players is shown by the fact that the company
which had been performing under the Earl of Leicester’s
name immediately wrote to their lord, and, while making
it clear that they did not expect any wages beyond the livery
to which they had been accustomed, begged for a definite
appointment as his household servants and for a licence to
certify the same as a security against interference under the
revived statutes during their annual travels in the pro-
vinces. A second proclamation of the same character was
issued on 19 April 1583. More important than the proclama-
tion, but probably representing the same policy, was the
repeal by Parliament of the Vagabond Act of 1531 and the
substitution of a new statute, which came into force upon
24 August. This included in a definition of vagabonds, not
only ‘ juglers, pedlars, tynkers and petye chapmen ’, but
also ‘ fencers, bearewardes, comon players in enterludes, and
minstrels, not belonging to any baron of this realme, or
towardes any other honorable personage of greater degree
Specific power was, however, given for the issue of local
travelling licences by mayors and county justices. So far
as noblemen’s players were concerned, the Act was presumably
no more than declaratory of their existing position. But
the knight or plain gentleman lost his privilege of protection
altogether ; and in future, if his servants wished to travel
as players, they had to get their licence from the magistrates.
As a matter of fact, with the exception of those forming part
of the royal household itself, practically all the companies of
professional players which appeared in London during Eliza-
beth’s reign were noblemen’s servants. A few performances

28 o the control of THE STAGE

were given at Court in early years by Sir Robert Lane’s
men, but these disappeared or transferred their services to
a more honourable personage upon the legislation of 1572.^
The most important of the provincial companies which did
not come to London also bore the names of noblemen, and
although many others were entertained by mere knights and
gentlemen, it is probable that, at any rate after 1572, these
did not range very widely from their head-quarters.^ The
necessity of procuring a fresh licence for every shire would
doubtless, as was its intention, afford an obstacle to free
circulation.* Apart from its defining clause, the main object
of the Act of 1572 was to try once more the experiment,
which had failed under Edward VI, of treating vagabondage
with an increased severity. The summary whipping by
individual magistrates was abolished except for children.
An adult offender was to be committed to gaol until the next
quarter sessions, and then, unless he could find a master to
take him for a year’s service, to be whipped and branded as
a rogue by boring through the ear. On a second offence he
was to be adjudged a felon, unless he could secure service
for two years, and a third offence was to be treated as felony
without benefit of clergy. The classification of unlicensed
minstrels as rogues led to the insertion of a clause confirming
the ancient privilege of the house of Dutton to issue licences
within the county of Chester ; ^ and another qualifying

* There is a doubtful notice of a Court play by the servants of George
Evelyn of Wotton in 1588. Sir Percival Hart's sons played in 1565.

* The list of small traveUing companies in Murray, ii. 77, 113, includes
14 belonging to knights and 3 to gentlemen in 1558-72, and 8 belonging
to knights and 2 to gentlemen in 1573-97 ; also 7 companies under the
names of their towns only m 1558-72 and ii in 1573-97. Alexander
Houghton of Lea in Lancashire wrote on 3 Aug. 1581 (G. J. Piccope,
Lancashtre and Cheshire Wills, ii. 238), * Yt ys my wyll that Thomas
Houghton of Brynescoules my brother shall have all my instrumentes
belongmge to mewsyckes and all maner of playe clothes yf he be mynded
to keppe and doe keppe players. And yf he wyll not keppe and maynteyne
playeres then yt ys my wyll that Sir Thomas Heskethe Knyghte shall
haue the same instrumentes and playe clothes. And I moste hertelye
requyre the said Syr Thomas to be ffrendlye unto Poke Gyllome and
William Shakshafte now dwellynge with me and ether to take theym unto
his scrvyce or els to helpe theym to some good master *. Was then
William Shakshafte a player in 1581 ?

» 5 . P. D. Elix. cbc. 48 ; clxiii. 44, record a dispute in 1 583 between
Sir Walter Waller and Mr. Potter, a J.P. of Kent. Waller, summoned
before the Council, denies that his servants played an interlude at Brasted*
and is confirmed by the constable and parishioners, who assert that
Mr. Potter factiously sent the men to gaol as rogues. Lord Cobham
made a vain attempt to reconcile the parties.

* Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 259, on the history of this privilege. The
reservation was contmued by 39 Elix. c. 4, § 10 (1598). By 43 Elix. c. 9, § 2

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 281

provision, the importance of which in connexion with players
has been overlooked, safeguarded the validity, as over-
riding the statute, of licences passed under the Great Seal of
England. It is in 1572 also that symptoms of a conflict of
judgement between the City and the Privy Council first
declare themselves. The annalist Harrison records that in
this year plays were * banished ’ out of London for fear of
infection, and on 20 May a minute of the Court of Aldermen
records that letters had been received from the Council for
renewed allowance under reasonable conditions, and that,
in place of immediate compliance, a letter of protest, based
on the peril of assemblies during a hot summer, was to be
sent to Lord Burghley. A somewhat similar situation
seems to have developed in 1573, which made it necessary
in July for the Council to write two letters to the Corporation,
of which the second had a peremptory note about it, in order
to obtain permission for some Italian players to exhibit an
‘ instrument of strange motions *, or puppet-show. The
following year was evidently one of considerable friction.
On 2 March the Corporation wrote to the Lord Chamberlain
with reference to a suggestion that the licensing of playing-
places within the City should be put in the hands of one
Holmes. They maintained their earlier refusal, already
mentioned, to commit such a matter to any private person,
and added that they had other offers for the licensing rights
on terms that would be profitable ‘ to the relefe of the poore
in the hospitalles ’. The terms of the letter make it clear
that they regarded the plan as one which, besides being
practically inconvenient, would entail a precedent * farre
extending to the hart of our liberties In the meantime
plays were apparently inhibited, for on 22 March the Council
wrote to inquire the causes of the restraint, ‘ to thintent
their Lordships may the better aunswer suche as desyre to
have libertye for the same ’. It may be conjectured that the
reply was unsatisfactory, for in May a remedy for which
provision had been made by anticipation in the Vagabond
Act of 1572 was resorted to, and a patent under the Great
Seal was issued to the Earl of Leicester’s men, which over-
ruled the proclamation of 1559 and ignored the position of
the Corporation altogether. By this the company received
permission to play during the royal pleasure either within

(1601), it was made dependent on a certificate by the Lords Justices to
the validity of Dutton's claim. Presumably this was obtained as the
privilege was reserved unconditionally by i Jac. /, c. 7, § 8 (1604). There
were several Elizabethan actors of the name of Dutton (cf. ch. xv), but
it is not known whether they belonged to the Cheshire house.

282 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

London itself or within or without any other town throughout
the country. The licence was only subject to two provisions.
One was that there should be no performance during common
prayer or during plague times in London ; the other that all
plays should be seen and allowed by the Master of the Revels.
As the Master of the Revels was an officer of the royal house-
hold, subordinate to the Lord Chamberlain, the action taken
practically amounted to a transference of control, so far
as this particular company was concerned, from the Corpora-
tion to the Court itself. Nothing specific was said in the
patent about the allowing of playing-places as distinct from
the allowing of plays, and it may have left the Corporation
with some reasonable discretion on this point. It is
not known that a similar licence was issued to any other
Elizabethan company besides Leicester’s men, although
this could hardly be definitely asserted without a complete
examination of the Patent Rolls for the reign. My own
impression is that the issue of the patent served its purpose
by bringing the Corporation to a more reasonable frame of
mind, and that it was not found necessary to repeat the
experiment, at any rate exactly in the same form. On 22 July
the Council issued a passport to * the comedie plaiers ’ to go
to London, and also wrote to the Corporation requiring their
^idmission and favourable usage. I feel little doubt that the
company in question were the Italians who had been at Windsor
and Reading during the progress. In any case it may be
taken for granted from the events of the following winter that
the Corporation were now beaten, and yielded. But it can
only have been with reluctance. The enforced toleration
of the Italian players, who seem to have brought with
them some female acrobats, had added strength to the
Puritan criticisms. Thomas Norton, the City Remembrancer,
writing a preface to a summary of City customs for the
use of the new Lord Mayor, James Hawes, and dwelling on
the need for better regulations against the contagion of the
plague, lays special stress on the danger of ‘ the unnecessarie
and scarslie honeste resorts to plaies ’ and of such assemblies
as those attracted by ‘ the unchaste, shamelesse and un-
naturall tomblinge of the Italion weomen ’. With a charac-
teristic touch of Puritan logic he adds, ‘ To offend God and
honestie, is not to cease a plague ’. In fact, the increase of
plague gave London a respite from plays during the winter.
On 15 November the Privy Council wrote to the Justices of
Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey to inhibit assemblies within
ten miles of London until Easter ; and the City hardly needed
the stimulus of an ‘ admonition * from their lordships to

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 283

persuade them to adopt a similar course. They used the
interval to enact an elaborate code for the regulation of plays,
whose continuance in their midst, whether they liked it or
not, they now saw to be inevitable. This took the form of an
Act of Common Council, which is dated on 6 December
1574. The preamble sets out the various * disorders and
inconvenyences ’ which from the civic point of ' view had
arisen from plays in the past, the unchaste and seditious
speeches, the waste of money and interference with diving
service, the accidents due to the fall of wooden structures
and to the use of firearms upon the stage, the opportunities
afforded by the performances for frays and quarrels, for pursc-
cutting, for the corruption of youth by ‘ previe and unmete
contractes ’, for incontinency in the inner chambers of the
‘ greate innes ’ to which the stages were adjacent. It then
proceeds to recite the recent inhibition for plague, and the
need to provide against the renewal of such ‘ enormyties *
upon the expected withdrawal of God’s hand of sickness by
securing that ‘ the laweful, honest and comelye use of plaies,
pastymes and recreacions ' should alone be permitted. The
actual regulations are six in number. No unchaste, seditious,
or otherwise improper plays were to be performed, upon
a penalty of fourteen days’ imprisonment and a fine of £5
for each offence. No play was to be shown which had not
first been perused and allowed by such persons as the Lord
Mayor and Aldermen might appoint. All playing-places and
the persons in control of them were to be licensed by the
Lord Mayor and Aldermen. All licensees were to be bound
to the City Chamberlain for the keeping of good order. No
licence was to be operative during a restraint for sickness or
other good reason, nor were plays to be given or spectators
received during the usual times for divine service on Sundays
and holidays. Every licensee was to make such contributions
to the poor and sick of the City as might be agreed upon with
the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Machinery was provided for
the recovery of penalties, which were also to be for the
benefit of the poor and sick, and an exception was made for
plays in private houses for which no money was taken.
The only regulation to which these were to be subject was
that against the introduction of unchaste and seditious
matters.

It is often stated that the regulations of 1574 were followed
in 1575 by a decree of the Corporation banishing players
totally and finally from the confines of the City. This is,
however, a mistake due to an erroneous endorsement of date
upon some documents which belong in reality to about 1584.

284 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

The regulations remained operative for a considerable number
of years. It is true that, reasonable and moderate as they were,
they were not accepted as satisfactory either by the players or
by their critics. After all, they left a good deal in working
to the discretion of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for the
time being ; and the players seem to have come to the con-
clusion that it would be better to be independent, as far as

f iossible, of the risks attaching to this discretion. They
urned to the easier conditions afforded by the lax county
government of the suburbs. Within two or three years
^ter the issue of the regulations two houses had been built
expressly for playing in the liberty of Halliwell, which was
within the jurisdiction of Middlesex ; the Theatre in 1576
and the Curtain either in the same year or early in 1577.
A third house, at Newington Butts on the Surrey side, was
already obsolete about 1592, and seems to have been m
existence by 1580. Exactly upon what considerations the
private house in the Blackfriars was established, also in
1576, is less certain. But at any rate, as a result of the action
of the Corporation in 1574, the main locality of the popular
drama was shifted from the courtyards of the London inns
to the specialized suburban theatres. It must not, of course,
be supposed that the inns fell altogether into disuse. The
new arrangement was not without its inconveniences for the
players. During the summer months it was no hardship
for pleasure-seekers to cross the river or the fields in search
of a spectacle. But the short evenings and dirty lanes of
winter left an advantage to the inns in the heart of the City,
which was not lightly to be forgone. It was still, therefore,
a matter of importance for the companies to maintain their
footing in the City, even if this meant compliance with
harassing restrictions, and they were ready to use all their
influence with the masters whose liveries they wore, with
the Lord Chamberlain, and with the Privy Council, in opposi-
tion to any further limitation of their privileges. So far
as the summer was concerned, the building of the suburban
theatres was a serious check to the policy of the Corpora-
tion. It was still the young folk of the City who crowded
the audiences ; nor could the greater distance diminish
the danger of infection, the neglect of divine service, the
waste of time and money, or the likelihood of falling
into bad company by the way. In future it was not
sufficient to make salutary regulations for London; it was
necessary to secure, by invoking the goodwill of the county
justices, or in default of that even the aid of the Privy
Council itself, that similar order should be taken outside

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 285

the liberties. In this direction the City never met with
more than very partial success. The county government
was naturally not as closely organized as their own, and
it was in the hands of officials and local gentlemen to whom
the business considerations and the growing Puritan instincts
of the City tradesmen did not appeal. Richard Young, in
particular, who was a prominent member of the Middlesex
bench for many years, earned an evil reputation as a per-
secutor of Puritans.^ On the other hand, the Corporation
might look for the co-operation of his colleague William
Fleetwood, who was their own Recorder,^ and machinery
had been established between the two areas in the form of a
joint committee or court of assistants for dealing with the
control of plays and other matters of ‘ good order

And if the players needed a refuge from the regulations of
1574, these must have been far from satisfactory to the
Puritans. They fell very far short of the wholesome Genevan
model. There was still toleration for the infamous histriones.
Plays were not even wholly forbidden on Sundays and holy
days,, and the crowd flocked to the inn-yard gates, already
open in spite of the regulation, while the bells were still ringing
for divine service in the empty churches. And although the
Corporation certainly did not mean to commit the licensing
of plays to the Master of the Revels or to any court nominee,
there is nothing to show that they had any intention of leaving
it to the ministers. The rise of the * sumptuous ’ theatres,
monuments of triumphant wickedness, in the fields, could only
add fuel to the wrath of the moralists. With Thomas White’s
Paul’s Cross sermon and John Northbrooke’s Treatise of 1577
begins a period of active diatribe in pulpit and pamphlet,
the deliberate intention of which was to stir the ‘ magistrate ’
to a stronger sense of the moral responsibilities of govern-

* For documents addressed to Richard Young or mentions of him, cf.
App. D, Nos. Ixviii, Ixxiv, xc. He is often referred to in the Hatfield MSS.,
in connexion with a monopoly of starch which he held, and otherwise.
In 1593 (iv. 393) he writes ' from my house, Stratford the Bowe*. On
30 Nov. 1 594 (v. 25) he wrote to the Queen, * in these my aged and extreme
or last days * with notes of many examinations, chiefly of papists, taken
by him. On the other hand. Carter, Shakespeare Puritan and Recusant,
145, quotes an inscription* on the coffin of Roger Rippon, who died in
Newgate in 1 592, * his blood crieth for speedy vengeance against . . .
M^. Richard Young, a justice of the peace in London, who in this and
many like points hath abused his power for the upholding of the Romish
Antichrist, Prelacy and Priesthood

* Cf. p. 265. Collier, i. 254, quotes an epigram calling Fleetwood ‘ the
enemy of all poor players *. John Field dedicates his Godly Exhortation
(1583) to him as a Middlesex and Surrey Justice.

* Cf. App. D, Nos. xxxvii, Ixviii.

286 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

ment, so that in London at least the letters of commendation
furnished by godlessly-minded nobles for their servants might
be disregarded and the accursed thing driven from the gates.
And if only, through a Sidney or a Walsingham or a Leicester
or a Burghley, the heart of the Council could be touched, it
might perhaps even be driven from the suburbs also.

For some time after 1574 the relations between Whitehall
and Guildhall were comparatively peaceful. Such plague as
prevailed in 1575 and 1576 seems to have affected West-
minster rather than the City. In 1577, however, an outbreak
led the Corporation to suspend plays, and the Council ordered
the Middlesex Justices to do the same from August to
Michaelmas. The Theatre may have been open again by
5 October, although plague seems to have been still prevalent
in November. It was over by January, and on the 13th of that
month the Council instructed the Lord Mayor to let the
famous Italian actor Drusiano Martinelli and his company
perform in the City until the beginning of Lent. The autumn
of 1578 again proved plaguesome, and on 10 November the
Council ordered the Surrey Justices to inhibit plays in
Southwark. On 23 December, however, a further order
was issued to London, Middlesex, and Surrey, permitting
the exercise of plays, subject to certain orders appointed
against infection. This was followed on the next day by
another letter to the Lord Mayor, specifying six companies
who were summoned to Court and to whom therefore the
privilege of exercising in public was to be limited. In the
spring of the following year the Council appear to have
been disturbed at the neglect of Lent, and on 13 March they
wrote both to the Lord Mayor and to the Middlesex Justices,
to direct that no plays should be allowed during the penitential
season, either in that or in any subsequent year. By 1580
the battery of ‘ the preachers dayly cryeng against the Lord
Maior and his bretheren ’ seems to have had its effect upon
the civic conscience. Naturally most of the sermons against
the stage were never printed, but an example, in addition to
that of Thomas White, is to be found in the Paul’s Cross
sermon of John Stockwood on 24 August 1578. Gosson’s
Schoole of Abtcse had followed Northbrooke’s Treatise in 1579,
and in 1580 itself appeared the Second and Third Blast of
Retraity the conspicuous civic arms upon which are perhaps
significant of the attitude now adopted by the Corporation.
On 6 April there was an earthquake, which was seized upon
by the controversialists as a sign of God’s wrath against
plays. The series of civic letters contained in the Retnetn-
brancia begins in this year, and shows a spirit of hostility

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 287

towards the stage far more pronounced than was indicated
by the regulations of 1574. Under the stimulus of further
pamphlets, Gosson’s Playes Confuted in 1582 and Stubbes’s
Anatomy of Abuses in 1583, this tendency continued to grow,
and finally landed the Corporation in a state of acute conflict
with the Council. The earliest letter preserved is from the
Lord Mayor to the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Bromley,
on 12 April 1580. In this he took occasion, on the strength
of a recent disturbance at the Theatre, of the admonition of
the hand of God in the earthquake, and of a charge from the
Council to avoid uncleanness and pestering of the city, to
point out that players were ‘ a very superfluous sort of men
and of such facultie as the lawes have disalowed *, and to
suggest the desirability of an order by which they should
be ‘ wholy stayed and forbidden *, both within and without
the liberties. The disturbance at the Theatre was probably
a fray between the Inns of Court and Oxford’s men, which led
to the imprisonment of some of the latter by the Council.
Some months before John Brayne and James Burbage had
been indicted for bringing about a breach of the peace by
causing unlawful assemblies. There was not in fact much
plague this summer, but the Council assented to a temporary
inhibition until Michaelmas and called upon the Middlesex
and Surrey Justices to extend it to Newington Butts and
other places in their jurisdictions. Perhaps emboldened by
his success, the Lord Mayor wrote a second letter on 17 June
to Lord Burghley, in which he expressed the opinion that the
haunting of unchaste plays in the suburbs was a serious
danger to the City, and again proposed their restraint as part
of a series of measures in the interests of the public health.
Burghley’s answer is not upon record. Presumably plays
went on as usual during the winter of 1580. An incident of
the following year makes it apparent that, at some uncertain
but probably recent date, the Corporation had attempted
to render the code of 1574 more stringent by forbidding
performances upon Sundays. Lord Berkeley’s men, who
claimed to be ignorant of this, performed upon Sunday,
9 July 1581, and became involved in a fray with some Inns
of Court men, which led to the committal of both parties to
the Counter. On the very next day the Privy Council wrote
to London and to Middlesex, and directed an inhibition of
plays on the ground of plague until Michaelmas. The City
responded by a suspension for an indefinite period on 13 July.
They seem to have taken advantage of this to press their
point about Sundays. On 14 November the Mayor issued
a precept against the setting up of bills for plays within the

288 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

ward jurisdictions of the aldermen. On i8 November a letter
was received from the Council pointing out that the infection
had ceased, and that ‘ theis poore men the players * should
now be permitted to exercise within the City for their ‘ releife ’
and ‘ redinesse with convenient matters for her highnes
solace this next Christmas Nothing is here said about
Sundays, but the Council Register contains a minute for
a letter of 3 December to the Mayor, distinct, unless there
is some confusion of date, from that of 18 November, of
which there is no entry in the Register, and referring to
a petition from the players, and a stipulation made with them
that Sundays should be excluded, and performances limited
to holy days and other week-days. This looks as if the
Corporation had questioned the first mandate and had
secured a concession as the price of submission. It must count
as a victory for the Puritans, but they were not content, and
one of the London ministers, John Field, took occasion to
address a letter of reproach to the Earl of Leicester for yielding
to the players, ‘ to the great greife of all the godly *.

It is difficult to resist the belief that a measure taken
during this same December arose from a desire of the Council
to counteract the growing recalcitrancy of the Corporation
by a device similar to that which had been successful in
1574. The precedent set in the issue of a patent to Leicester’s
men was not, however, exactly followed. The position was
now dealt with in a more comprehensive fashion, by the issue
of a commission under a patent to the Master of the Revels
himself. The object of this commission was in part to invest
the Master with authority to press workmen and wares for
the service of the Revels. But it also empowered him to
call upon players and playmakers to appear before him and
recite their pieces, presumably with a view to their considera-
tion for performance at Court, And, as it were incidentally
to the exercise of such a power, the patent went on to declare
in the most general terms that the Master of the Revels was
thereby appointed ‘ of all suche showes plaies plaiers and
playmakers together with their playing places to order and
rcforme auctorise and put downe as shalbe thought meete
or unmeete unto himself e or his said deputie in that behalf e *.
Like the licence of 1574, the commission of 1581 is expressed
as being ‘ any acte statute ordynance or provision * to the
contrary notwithstanding.

The functions thus assigned to the Master of the Revels
came to be of the first importance in the history of the stage.
But for the moment the result of their stroke can hardly
have satisfied the expectations of the Council. The Corpora-

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 289

tion were not so ready to retreat irom an untenable position
as they had been seven years before. Either in ignorance
of the Master’s commission, or with the deliberate intention
of asserting the privileges ignored therein, they seem to have
definitely committed themselves, in the course of 1582, to
the policy, long advocated by their spiritual advisers, of
a complete suppression of the stage. The method of attack
adopted was, so far as any records yet published disclose,
a new one. Instead of relying upon their licensing powers,
now very doubtful and in any case of no validity in the
suburbs, they issued on 3 April a precept to the City guilds,
enjoining them to charge all freemen with the responsibility
of keeping their servants and other dependants from repairing
to any play, whether in city or in suburbs, upon penalty of
punishment both for the offending servant and for his master.
This is presumably the ‘ late inhibition ’ against playing after
evening prayer on holidays, which the Privy Council asked
the Lord Mayor to revoke by a letter of ii April, in which
they expressed the opinion that in the absence of infection
such playing might be used ‘ without impeachment of the
service of God whereof we have a speciall care provided
always that Sundays should be excepted, and that fit persons
should be appointed by the Corporation to ‘ consider and
allowe of such playes onely as be fitt to yeld honest recreacion
and no example of euell *. It is to be observed that the Council
do not suggest that the allowance shall be done by the Ma,ster
of the Revels or make any allusion to the powers conferred
by his patent. Perhaps this indicates some willingness to
come to a compromise. The Lord Mayor’s reply, written two
days later, is in its turn not otherwise than conciliatory.
He suggests that the Council may perhaps not be fully aware
of the difficulties entailed by plays on holidays. He has
found that either he has to tolerate the admission of the
audience during the times of prayer, or else the plays must
continue until a very inconvenient time of night for servants
and children to be abroad. He also calls attention to the
growth of the plague, which seems to him to justify the
continuance of the restraint for the present, and finally hints
that later on he will fall in with the views of the Council
and duly appoint suitable licensers. Plague was in fact rife
during 1582, and perhaps left the Council no choice but to
drop the question for a time. In July the Lord Mayor
apologized on the ground of infection for refusing a request
from the Earl of Warwick that a servant of his might be
allowed to give a public display of fencing at the Bull in
Bishopsgate. All that he could promise was to let the

3339*1 U

290 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

man pass through the City with his company and drum on the
way to the Theatre or some other place in the suburbs.
Possibly the correspondence of April was only a cloak for the
real intentions of the Corporation ; or possibly they miscal-
culated the Council’s reasons for not carrying it further.
At any rate, still profiting by the continuance of the plague,
they determined in the course of the autumn to risk another
step in advance. The plan for working through the guilds
was ill-conceived, and had probably failed ; obviously masters
could not effectively prevent their apprentices from slipping
off to Finsbury or Southwark on holiday afternoons. At
any rate nothing more is heard of it. To this date probably
belongs an Act of Common Council, which after dealing with
other matters of civic government, briefly enacted that public
plays should ‘ wholly be prohibited as ungodly ’, and that
suit should be made to the Council for a like prohibition
‘ in places near unto the city ’.

It was not long before an opportunity for opening the pro-
jected campaign against the outside houses presented itself.
On Sunday, 13 January 1583, eight persons were killed by the
fall of a scaffold during a bear-baiting at Paris Garden in
Surrey. John Field, Leicester’s correspondent of 1581, was
quick to point the Puritan moral in A Godly Exhortation
dedicated to the Corporation. But already, on the day after
the accident, the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Blank, had written
to Lord Burghlcy to urge that this interposition of the hand
of God called for redress of the abuse of the Sabbath day,
and to beg for Burghley’s good offices with the Surrey
Justices, some of whom were willing to take action but
alleged that they lacked commission. Burghley promised
that the Council would consider the matter, and suggested
that it was within the scope of the Corporation’s authority to
make a general order against the attendance of Londoners
at Sunday entertainments. The previous year’s experience,
however, had probably impressed the Corporation with the
difficulty of securing that such an order should not be a dead
letter outside their own jurisdiction ; and although the
Council Register is deficient at this point, it is certain that the
event at Paris Garden did in fact result in the extension by
the Council itself of the prohibition against Sunday perform-
ances from the City to the counties. But this was not until
after the Lord Mayor had again pressed the question in a letter
to the Council of 3 July, in which he alleged the attractions
of unlawful spectacles as a reason for the decay of archery,
of which the Council had complained, and declared that
Paris Garden was rebuilt and the Sunday bear-baitings in

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 291

full swing, and that blame was thrown upon the City authorities
in Paul’s Cross sermons and elsewhere, * to our shame and
greif, when we cannot remedie it If the Council yielded
on this point, they remained quite firm on the general question
of the toleration of plays, on all days other than Sundays,
within the City as well as without. We do not know what
steps, if any, they took to enforce the licensing powers of the
Master of the Revels. But it is likely that the formation from
the existing companies of the Queen’s men in the March of
1583 was a deliberate and to some extent a successful
attempt to overawe the City by the use of the royal name.
It may be inferred from letters of the Lord Mayor to Richard
Young of Middlesex and to Sir Francis Walsingham in April
and May that plague prevented plays during the greater
part of the year. But on 26 November the Council wrote that
there was now no infection, and that Her Majesty’s players
were to be suffered to play as usual until the following
Shrovetide. The Corporation, for all their Act of Common
Council, made no open resistance, but they qualified the
permission by limiting it to holy days, and it took a further
letter from Sir Francis Walsingham on i December to get it
extended to ordinary working days.

The struggle, however, was only deferred, and the real
crisis came in 1584, During Whit- week there were frays
amongst the knots of serving-men and prentices who hung
about the doors of the Theatre and Curtain. The Corporation
approached the Council and, although there seems to have
been no plague, obtained sanction, in spite of the opposition
of the Lord Chamberlain and Vice-Chamberlain, to the
suppression of both houses. When the winter came round
the Queen’s men brought their case before the Council, and
pointed out that the time of their service was at hand, that
for the sake thereof as well as of their living they needed
to exercise, and that the season of the year was past to play
at any of the theatres outside the City. They petitioned for
letters to the Lord Mayor to admit them to London, and also
for an order to the Middlesex Justices, doubtless to revoke
the suppression of the previous summer. Their case was set
out more fully in a body of annexed articles. Unfortunately
these are lost, but their tenor can be gathered from the
City rejoinder. This took the form partly of an historical
summary and partly of a detailed reply to the contentions of
the players. The Corporation recited the reluctant toleration
granted in 1574, the disregard of the rule against receiving
spectators during divine service, the continued prevalence
of abuses and the agitation of the preachers, the Act of

292 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

Common Council conjecturally assigned to 1582, and finally
the ruin of Paris Garden and the abolition of Sunday plays to
which it led. The analysis of the arguments of the Queen’s
men is in a mercilessly critical vein, very different to the
reasonable regulations of 1574, and may perhaps be ascribed
to the malicious wit of Recorder Fleetwood. The writer
deals first with the alleged need for exercise before playing
at Court, and suggests that exercise in private houses might
suffice, as it was unsuitable, let alone the danger of bringing
infection into the royal presence, to offer to Her Majesty
pieces already produced before the basest assemblies of
London and Middlesex. As to the stay of the players’ living,
the view, which must surely have gone back some decades
for its justification, is put forward that in times past it had
not been thought meet that players should look to playing
for a living, ‘ but men for their lyvings using other honest
and lawfulT artes, or reteyned in honest services, have by
companies learned some enterludes for some encreasce to
their profit by other mens pleasures in vacant time of recrea-
tion ’. The players had claimed in their first article that the
Lord Mayor’s order of toleration on holy days should continue ;
but the Act of Common Council had cancelled this, and more-
over the provision against the reception of audiences before
the end of common prayer had been disregarded. Nor was
it comely for youth to run * streight from prayer to playes,
from Gods service to the Deuells ’. The second article had
dwelt on the difficulty in a dark and foul season of either
going into the fields for plays, or deferring them until after
evening prayer ; but the true remedy was ‘ to leave of that
unnecessarie expense of time, wherunto God himself geveth
so many impediments ’. The third article had proposed to
make plays permissible, so long as the deaths from plague
were below fifty a week. The reply is that ‘ to play in
plagetime is to encrease the plage by infection : to play out
of plagetime is to draw the plage by offendinges of God upon
occasion of such playes *. But if the number of deaths from
plague were to be taken as the basis of toleration, it must be
remembered that this number was an inadequate measure
of the danger of infection amongst the living, and to wait
until it rose to fifty would be to run too great a risk for the
sake of a few ‘ whoe if they were not her Maiesties servants
shold by their profession be rogues ’. The normal weekly
number of deaths out of plague-time was between forty and
fifty, and commonly under forty ; surely it would be enough
to allow plays when the rate from all causes had been for
two or three weeks together under fifty. Toleration was only

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 293

daimed for the Queen’s players. But this had been so in the
previous winter, and all the playing-places had been filled
with players calling themselves the Queen’s men. Any letters
or warrants for toleration should set out the number and
names of the company. Much of this dialectic could hardly
be taken seriously ; it was accompanied by some suggested
remedies of a practical character. The City still thought the
limitation to private houses the better course. Failing that,
the regulations of 1574 should be revived, subject to the
conditions that playing should only be allowed when the total
deaths had been under fifty a week for twenty days together,
that no plays should be given on the Sabbath or before the
close of evening prayer on holy days, that the audience
should not be received during prayer-time, that the per-
formances should be short enough to let the audience get
home before dark, and that the Queen’s men alone should
be tolerated and should not be allowed to divide themselves
into several companies. It was apparently contemplated that
these conditions should apply to city and county alike.

I have described these arguments in some detail, because
of the clearness with which they set out the divergent views.
Unfortunately the documents from which they are drawn do
not record any decision upon them. But whether the
remedies were accepted, wholly or in part, or not, there can
be no doubt whatever that the attempt to enforce an absolute
prohibition had utterly failed, and that for several years
afterwards the companies continued to find their winter
quarters within London itself. Henceforward it became the
settled policy of the Corporation to defer to the authority of
the Privy Council, and to content themselves with doing their
best to influence that body in the direction of their own
ideals. There came a day when they were destined to reach
some measure of success along these lines. For the time,
however, events followed a quiet course. During two or
three years there is a blank in the correspondence. Plays
were suspended in London and Surrey during the summer of
1586, at the Lord Mayor’s request, on the ground that the
growing heat might breed a plague, and a similar measure
in 1587 had an additional provocation in disturbances which
had taken place at the play-houses. In both years the inhibi-
tion was declared early in May, and in 1587 it was fixed to
terminate at the end of August. On 29 October the Council
had to call the attention of both the Surrey and the Middlesex
Justices to the imperfect observance of the order against
Sunday plays. There was, of course, an undercurrent of
Puritan discontent during these years at the lame issue of the

294 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

anti-stage agitation. This is well shown by a grumbling
letter from a correspondent of Walsingham’s in January
1587, in which * the daily abuse of stage-plays * is represented
as still ‘ an offence to the godly *. The redress of Sabbath-
breaking is acknowledged, but still ‘ two hundred proud
players jet in their silks * under the protection of various lords,
as well as of Her Majesty. The writer proposes that every
stage shall be required to pay a weekly subsidy in aid of
the poor. The flood of pamphlets had, however, subsided.
The Mirror of Monsters^ published by William Rankins in
1587, is of markedly less importance than its predecessors.
In November 1587 the City sent a deputation to the Privy
Council in the hope of securing the suppression of plays
within their boundaries ; so far as is known, they were
unsuccessful. A year or two later new combative relations
were established between the players and the Puritans as an
outcome of the Martin Marprelate controversy, which began
with a series of anonymous pamphlets attacking the principles
of episcopacy, and continued throughout 1589 and 1590.
The players were not at first particularly concerned against
their hereditary enemies. Tarlton, who died on 3 Septem-
ber 1588, is said himself to have satirized the existing
ecclesiastical order in a mock discovery of Simony ‘ in Don
John of Londons cellar *. And indeed the ribald style in
which Martin Marprelate canvassed the bishops was held
to be modelled on the manners of the theatre. ‘ The stage
is brought into the church ; and vices make play of church
matters *, said one episcopalian writer, and described Martin
as declaring on his death-bed, ‘ All my foolery I bequeath
to my good friend Lanam and his consort, from whom
I had it *. Bacon also condemned ‘ this immodest and
deformed manner of writing lately entertained, whereby
matters of religion are handled in the style of the stage
But before long the vigour of the attack drove the bishops to
seek on their side for an equally effective literary retort.
They hired writers, including John Lyly and Thomas Nashe ;
and these not only answered Martin in his own vein, but also
made use of the theatres for what must have been the con-
genial task of producing scurrilous plays against him. To
this campaign there are many allusions in the pamphlets
belonging to the controversy. The Puritans hit back with all
their old contempt of the rogues and vagabonds dressed in
the Queen’s liveries ; but the laugh was on the other side
when Martin was brought dressed like a monstrous ape on
the stage, and wormed and lanced to let the blood and evil
* Bacon, On the Controversies of the Church (Spedding, viii. 76).

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 295

humours out of him, or when Divinity appeared with a
scratched face, complaining of the assaults received in the
hideous creature’s attacks upon her honour. Veins Comoedia^
the savage Aristophanic invective, was assuredly in full
swing upon the English boards. Nashe professed to have
another device ready, in which Martin was to figure in
a grotesque pageant called the May -Game of Martinism ; but
the scandal was now getting too great, and the Government
was obliged to disavow its own instruments. According to
Nashe, it was by ‘ sly practice * that the comedies which
had been penned were not allowed to be played. However
this may have been, we find the Lord Mayor writing to
Lord Burghley on 6 November 1589 that, in accordance with
what he understood from a letter of his lordship to Mr. Young
of Middlesex to be his desire, he had stayed plays in the
City, in that the Master of the Revels ‘ did utterly mislike the
same Almost immediately afterwards, on 12 November,
the Privy Council issued three letters from ‘ the Starre
Chamber ’ to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor,
and the Master of the Revels, directing the Master to join
with a divine and with a person ‘ learned and of judgement ’
nominated by the other two, and form a commission for allow-
ing the books of plays and striking out or reforming ‘ suchc
partes and matters as they shall fyndc unfytt and undecent
to be handled in playes, both for Divinitie and State
Perpetual disabilities are threatened to players who produce
any pieces not so allowed.

There are indications that in the next year or two a consider-
able increase took place in the number of plays given during
each week. Other kinds of amusement, no less than more
serious occupations, suffered, and in a letter of 25 July 1591 to
London, Middlesex, and Surrey, the Privy Council had not
merely to insist once more upon the due observance of Sunday,
but also to forbid plays on Thursdays, on the ground that on
this day bear-baiting and other like pastimes, maintained for
the royal pleasure if occasion should require, had ‘ ben allwayes
accustomed and practized In the following year the
Corporation were moved to approach Archbishop Whitgift
with a view to obtaining some redress of their grievances
through his influence. By a letter of 25 February they set
out the evils of plays in the familiar terms, expressing them-
selves as moved by the ‘ earnest continuall complaint ’ of
the preachers and declaring that by no one thing was the
government of the City ‘so greatly annoyed and disquieted’.
They explained the difficulty in which they were put by the
authority conferred upon the Master of the Revels, who had

296 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

licensed the playing-houses, ‘which before that time lay
open to all the statutes for the punishing of these and such
lyke disorders and begged the Archbishop to confer with
the Master as to the possibility of providing for the Queen’s
recreation without the necessity of public performances.
A second letter of 6 March thanks the Archbishop for his
advice, which apparently was, quite frankly, to bribe the
Master. A committee of the Corporation was appointed on
i8 March to treat with Tilney, but the scheme fell through for
financial reasons. On 22 March the Court of the Merchant
Taylors Company discussed a * precepte’ from the Lord Mayor,
which called attention to the evils of plays and suggested
‘ the payment of one anuytie to one Mr. Tylney, mayster
of the revelles of the Queenes house, in whose hands the
redresse of this inconveniency doeth rest, and that those
playes might be abandoned out of this citie The Court
sympathized, but ‘ wayinge the damage of the president
and enovacion of raysinge of anuyties upon the Companies
of London *, declined to unloose their purse-strings. On
12 June the Lord Mayor reported to Lord Burghley a disturb-
ance in Southwark, the pretence for which had been furnished
by a gathering at a play, held in defiance of orders on a
Sunday. Anticipation of a renewal of disorder on Mid-
summer Day led the Council on 23 June to impose an inhibi-
tion on plays until the following Michaelmas. Three undated
papers in the Henslowe-Alleyn collection at Dulwich may
perhaps suggest that later in the summer they became
willing to relax their severity. The first of these is a petition
to the Council from Lord Strange’s men, begging to be allowed
to use their play-house on the Bankside, both for their own
sake, as otherwise they would have to travel at considerable
charge, and for that of the watermen who ‘ nowe in this long
vacation ’ look for relief through ferrying spectators to and
from the plays. The second is a petition from the watermen
themselves to the same effect. The third is a copy of a warrant
from the Council, setting out that not long since they had
restrained Lord Strange’s men from playing at the Rose and
enjoined them to play at Newington Butts, and removing
the injunction, ‘ by reason of the tediousness of the waie
and that of longe tyme plaies have not there bene used on
working daies ’. If these documents really belong to 1592,
which must remain doubtful, the permission to resume playing
was almost certainly rendered nugatory by a plague more
serious than any that had devastated London since 1563.
In fact Henslowe’s Diary shows no performances at the Rose
between 22 June and 29 December, and the short winter

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 297

season that followed was abruptly broken off by a renewed
outbreak and an order from the Privy Council on 28 January
for the suppression of all assemblies for purposes of amuse-
ment within seven miles of London. This was probably
renewed in April, and the companies, who had waited for
some months in hopes of relaxation, had perforce to travel.
On 29 April and 6 May the Council itself issued warrants of
authorization to Lord Sussex’s and Lord Strange’s men
respectively to assist them in taking this course. Probably
the theatres remained closed during the greater part of the
next eighteen months. Henslowe’s Diary only indicates
performances from 27 December 1593 to 6 February 1594,
evidently interrupted by another restraint within five miles
of London under a Council order of 3 February, and then
a few more in April and in May. The Countess of Warwick’s
men seem to have been negotiating with the City for tolera-
tion on 10 May. Regular playing, however, was not resumed
on Bankside until 3 June. The plague was now fairly over,
and the shattered companies began to reconstruct themselves.
In October Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor begging
permission for his men to use the Cross Keys in Gracechurch
Street. In November Francis Langley, one of the alnagers
for London, was planning a new theatre, the Swan, on the
Bankside, and the Lord Mayor once more detailed the objec-
tions to plays in a letter of protest to Lord Burghley. This
was followed up on 13 September 1595 by a formal petition
from the Corporation for ‘ the present stay and finall sup-
pressing ’ of plays in Middlesex and Surrey. Herein the origin
of yet another prentice riot was traced to the obnoxious
performances. Obviously the request was not acceded to.
Henslowe’s Diary shows no break in the sequence of plays,
except for Lent, until the July of 1596, when plague once
more called for ^n inhibition. At about the same time
the balance of parties on the Privy Council was seriously
disturbed by the death of Henry I^rd Hunsdon, who had
been Lord Chamberlain since 1585. His successor. Lord
Cobham, was less favourable to the players. In the course
of the long vacation Thomas Nashe wrote of them as
‘ piteously persecuted by the Lord Maior and the Aldermen :
and however in their old Lord’s tyme they thought there
state setled it is now so uncertayne they cannot build upon
it In November there was a petition from inhabitants
of the Blackfriars against the erection of a theatre in the
precinct, which recited how ‘ all players being banished by
the Lord Mayor from playing within the city by reason of the
great inconveniences and ill rule that followeth them, they

298 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

now think to plant themselves in liberties At last the City
had gained the point denied them in 1574 and again in 1584.
Their importunity, in season and out of season, had moved
the hearts of the autocratic body at Whitehall. Hence-
forward, although play-houses might stand thick enough
within the rapidly growing suburbs beyond the gates, there
were to be none, or at any rate none but ‘ private ’ houses,
within the closely guarded circuit of the liberties. A fuller
account of the transaction, without any clear indication of its
date, is given many years later by Richard Rawlidge in
A Monster Lately Found Out^ or The Scourging of Tipplers
(1628), and five play-houses are enumerated as pulled down
and suppressed under authority from the Queen and Council
by the * religious senators

The events of the next year must have given the Corpora-
tion high hopes of making an equally clean sweep in the
suburbs. They had by now learnt that, although there were
many abuses of the stage to which the Council would turn
a blind eye, any interference in politics or encouragement,
direct or indirect, to civil commotion, was not one of them.
On 28 July 1597 they were able, in renewing their appeal for
a * present staie and fynall suppressinge * of the Middlesex
and Surrey theatres, to add to their summary of ‘ incon-
veniences ’ a definite statement of a recent confession by
some unruly apprentices that plays had served as the
‘ randevous ’ of their ‘ mutinus attemptes *. On the same
day the Council wrote to the Middlesex and Surrey Justices,
ordering not merely that there should be a restraint of plays
within three miles of the City until Allhallowtide, but also
that the owners of the theatres should be required ‘ to pluck
downe quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are made
for people to stand in, and so to deface the same as they maie
not be ymploied agayne to suche use As their reason they
cited the disorders, due partly to the * confluence of bad
people* at the play-houses, and partly to the handling of
‘ lewd matters * on the stage. There is reason to suppose
that their action was not altogether determined by the
representations of the City. A ‘ seditious * play called The
Isle of Dogs had been shown on one of the Bankside stages.*
This had been brought to their notice by the famous heretic-
hunter and informer, Richard Topcliffe, and was, according
to Henslowe’s Diary^ the cause of the restraint. The players
and one of the makers of the play had been committed
to prison ; the other, Thomas Nashe, had fled to Yarmouth,
leaving incriminating papers in his lodgings. On 15 August

* Cf. ch. xvi, introduction. * C£. ch. xxiii, s.vv. Jonson, Nashe.

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 299

a commission was issued to Topcliffe and others to examine
further into the matter and ascertain how far the ‘ lewd *
play had been spread abroad. The second writer has recently
been found to be Benjamin Jonson, who thus makes his
stormy entry into a field of activity which he was destined,
more than any other save one, to illustrate and adorn. It
is natural to suppose that, in ordering the complete gutting
of the theatres, the Council contemplated the continuance of
the restraint even beyond Allhallowtide. But if so, they again
changed their minds, and the City were disappointed. On
3 October a warrant was sent to the Keeper of the Marshalsea
for the release of Jonson and of the offending players, and
Henslowe’s Diary notes the resumption of playing a week
later. Evidently the Council had satisfied themselves, perhaps
under the influence of another new Lord Chamberlain, George
Lord Hunsdon, who had succeeded Lord Cobham in the course
of the year, that it was after all impossible, in view of the
amenities of the royal Christmas, wholly to dispense with plays.

This winter of 1597-8 is really an important turning-point
in the history of stage-control. The events of the past two
years, following upon a long period of vexatious conflict, seem
to have brought the Government to the conclusion that the
method of regulation through the magistrates had now broken
down, and that the time had come for the resettlement of
the matter upon the more centralized basis already fore-
shadowed by the commission to the Master of the Revels
in 1581. Of this there are two indications. And first, for the
county as a whole, a new Vagabond Act, replacing that of
1572, had been called for by the progressive development of
the Elizabethan poor-law policy on the humane lines of a local
rate, and the consequent possibility of discriminating more
closely between the deserving poor and the idle vagrants. The
latter class were again to be treated with greater severity.
Summary whipping was reinstated and might be inflicted in
future by local constables as well as justices. The more danger-
ous rogues were to be transported, and treated as felons if they
returned. These were the main objects of the statute, but
incidentally the status of players and minstrels was affected.
The power of justices to license travelling was taken away.
Before long even John Dutton had to prove his claim to
his Cheshire privilege. The right of noblemen to protect
their servants was not interfered with, and indeed must now
have become even more important, as they acquired a
monopoly ; but it must be exercised under hand and seal
and, although this point is not dealt with in the statute,
must presumably be endorsed by the Master of the Revels.

300 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

As regards London and its suburbs in particular, the Privy
Council, with the Master of the Revels as an adviser and
agent, took the control into its own hands, and decided
that the companies to be licensed should be limited to two.
It seems likely that this policy took shape in a solemn order
in Star Chamber, although the document itself has not
reached us.^ At any rate the rule is set out and confirmed
in a letter written by the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord
Admiral to the Justices and the Master of the Revels on
19 February 1598, in which complaint is made of the intrusion
of a third company, not included in the Council’s sanction
and not bound to the Master of the Revels for observance of
the conditions imposed. In principle it continued to prevail
until the end of the reign, although in practice it was not
found very easy to restrict the number of companies, and
still less that of theatres. On the Surrey side, indeed, an
element of local feeling adverse to the stage began to show
itself, which perhaps owed its origin to little more than
a dispute about the liability of the players to contribute to
local assessments. It took shape in a petition from the
vestry of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, to the Council on 19 July
1598 for the closing of the play-houses in the parish, on
account of the enormities that came thereby. But on
28 March 1600 the vestry were content that the church-
wardens should ‘ talk with the players for tithes for their
playhouses and for money for the poor, according to the order
taken before my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master
of the Revels ’. In Middlesex, on the other hand, the growth
of the western suburbs and their convenience for theatrical
purposes led to divers new enterprises. The most important
of these was the erection of the Fortune in St. Giles’s,
Cripplegate, by Edward Alleyn during 1600, The Council
seem to have been in two minds about the desirability of the
scheme. In January the project had been encouraged by
a personal letter from the Lord Admiral to the Middlesex
Justices. Some of the inhabitants, however, raised a protest,
and in March the Council ordered the Justices in nowise to
permit the building, as that would be inconsistent with the
order for the plucking down of theatres given them ‘ not longe
sithence ’. If this means the order of 28 July 1597, the Council
seem to have forgotten that their own action later in the same
year had rendered it nugatory ; nor were they very consistent
when, on 15 May 1600, they allowed the use of the Swan, which
certainly should have been plucked down in 1597, for feats
of a ctivity by Peter Bromvill, an acrobat specially recom*

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 301

mended to Elizabeth by the French king. Ultimately the
question of the Fortune received a final reconsideration.
The inhabitants, just as in Southwark, were squared by the
promise of liberal contributions towards poor relief. Possibly,
also, the Queen herself intervened in Alleyn’s favour, and
on 8 April the consent of the Council was signified by a further
letter to the justices. On 22 June the allowance was explained
and the principle adopted in 1597 reaffirmed by an Order in
Council, which was not, however, passed without some
‘ question and debate There were to be two houses and
no more, the Fortune in Middlesex for the Admiral’s men
and the Globe in Surrey for the Chamberlain’s. In addition
to the old prohibitions of plays on Sunday, in Lent or during
infection, two new restrictions make their appearance.
No plays were in future to be given in any ‘ common inn ’,
and neither of the privileged companies was to play more
than twice a week. A few months before, on i April 1600,
the Middlesex Justices had stopped a contemplated play-
house in East Smithfield on the strength of the Star Chamber
order. But the twice- repeated limitation of the Privy
Council, for all the formality of its expression, seems to have
had the shortest of lives. By October 1600 it had already
been broken by Pembroke’s men, who began to play in that
month as a third company at the Rose. During the same
year the Chapel boys and those of St. Paul’s were also per-
forming, although no doubt these were technically located
in ‘ private * houses. Blackfriars, where the Chapel plays
were given, was not yet in the full sense part of the City ;
it was, however, to the Lord Mayor that the Council gave
instructions on ii March 1601 to stop plays in the Black-
friars, as well as at St. Paul’s, during Lent. In May the
Curtain was open, and although the Council suppressed
a particular play there, they did not suppress the house.
By the end of 1601 the order of the previous year had fallen
into complete disregard. There were a ‘ multitude of play-
howses * and a daily concourse of people to the plays. The
Corporation complained and were informed by the Council
on 31 December that the fault lay largely with themselves
and their predecessors, as they had failed to see to the execu-
tion of their lordships’ directions. These were renewed, and
a reminder was also sent to the county Justices. It has been
suggested that the attitudes of the Corporation and the
Council had now been reversed, and that the former had
become favourably disposed towards the players.^ I find

* Wallace, ii. i6a.

302 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

no evidence of this. Probably the City policy was to show that
the Council’s attempt at regulation had broken down, and
that complete prohibition had become the only remedy.
On 31 March 1602 the Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor,
who had reported some amendment of 'the abuses, and
announced that, ‘ upon noteice of her Maiesties pleasure at the
suit of the Earle of Oxford ’, a third company, made up of
the Earl’s servants and of those of the Earl of Worcester, were
to be tolerated, and were to have the Boar’s Head as their
sole playing-place.

Plays were suspended by the Council on 19 March 1603
during the illness of the Queen, which terminated fatally on
24 March. Their resumption was anticipated on the coming of
James, one of whose first acts was to issue on 7 May a procla-
mation against plays or bear-baiting on Sundays. But plague
intervened, a plague more deadly even than that of 1592-4 ;
and it was not until after the Lent of 1604 that on 9 April
the Council authorized the three companies of players to
the King, Queen, and Prince to perform at the Globe, Curtain,
and Fortune, so long as the weekly plague-deaths should not
exceed thirty. These were the former companies of the
Chamberlain’s, Worcester’s, and the Admiral’s men, now
taken directly into the royal service. By a piece of generosity
not paralleled during the late reign, the King’s men had
received a payment of £30 from the Treasurer of the Chamber
in February for their * maintenance and relief ’, in view of
the prohibition of performances during the plague. The
attachment of the three companies to the royal households
is to be regarded as something a little more than a mere
honour bestowed upon them. It signified a further advance
on the lines already laid down in 1597 and 1600 of direct
royal control in affairs theatrical. In favour of the King’s
men, the precedent set for Leicester’s men in 1574 was
revived, and their privileges, formerly dependent upon orders
of the Privy Council, were conferred upon them by a licence
under letters patent. A similar patent was drafted for
Queen Anne’s men, but was not at the time executed. In
1606 a provincial detachment of these men was using a letter
of recommendation from the Queen herself as a warrant ;
they did not receive a licence under letters patent until 1609.
Gradually, however, the issue of a patent became the normal
Jacobean method of licensing the privileged London players.
The Children of the Queen’s Revels received theirs in 1604
and a new one in 1610, the Prince’s men in 1606, the Duke of
York’s in 1610, the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1611, and the Elector
Palatine’s in 1613. In 1615 a patent of an exceptional type

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 303

was issued to Philip Rosseter and his partners for a new
theatre at Porter’s Hall in the Blackfriars. In the patents
for companies the model of the 1574 patent is in the main
followed, but as a rule the ‘ usual howse ’ in which the com-
pany will play is named. This, however, does not seem to be
meant to fetter their discretion to use some other convenient
house, and a general authority to play in the provinces is,
except in the case of the Revels Children, always added.
There is no such limitation on playing to two days a week
as was imposed on the companies by the Council order of 1600.
Most of the patents contain a clause reserving ‘ all auctoritie
power priuiledges and profittes ’ appertaining to the Master
of the Revels under his patent or commission. This is
omitted in the licence for the King’s men and in both of those
for the Revels Children, whose 1604 patent contains a special
clause requiring their plays to have the ‘ approbacion and
allowaunce ’ of Samuel Daniel, whom Queen Anne had
appointed for that purpose.^ It became the duty of the
Master to scrutinize the phraseology of plays in the light of
an Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, passed in May 1606,
which imposed a penalty of £10 for any profane or jesting use
of the names of God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Ghost, or the
Trinity, in any stage-play, interlude, show. May-game, or
pageant. This statute, even if not always literally observed,
entailed much revision of existing dramatic texts.

If the system of patents did not render the London players
independent of the Master of the Revels, still less did it
abrogate from the ultimate authority ot the King in Council.
There is evidence that the theatres were closed in the
autumn of 1605, during which plague was prevalent, and in
this matter the responsibility for action still rested with
the Council. 2 Unfortunately the full Register for the period
1603-13 is missing. A letter of 12 April 1607 from the City
asking for a restraint is addressed to the Lord Chamberlain,
whose function it would no doubt be to move the Council. In
this or some later year the Whitefriars vestry seem also to
have made a protest against the dumping of a play-house in
their precinct.^ That plague interfered with plays in 1608-9,

* There is no reference to licensing in the later Queen's Revels patent of
i6io. That for the Queen’s men in 1609 has the usual provision for licensing
by the Master of the Revels. This was, however, not inconsistent with
‘ a kind of gouernment and suruey ouer the said players ’ by the Chamber-
lain of the Queen's Household (cf. ch. xiii).

* Philip Gawdy (Letters, 160) writes on 28 Oct. 1605 of his nephew in
London, * Playes he was never at any, for they are all put downe ' ;
cf. App. D, Nos. cxxxix, cxl.

^ Cl. ch. xvii.

304 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

and 1609-10 also, is indicated by payments made to the King’s
men ‘ for their private practice * during these years. After
1610 London was no more troubled by the plague until 1625.
Other reasons for inhibiting plays sometimes presented them-
selves. Some bad political indiscretions of 1608, which will
require consideration in the next chapter, led to a temporary
suspension of performances and a royal threat of permanent
suppression. The untimely death of Prince Henry on
7 November 1612 threw a shadow upon all mirth, and the
Council declared that ‘ these tymes doe not suite with such
playes and idle shewes, as are daily to be scene in and neere
the cittie of London, to the scandall of order and good
governement at all occasions when they are most tollerable’.
On 29 March 1615 the Council summoned representatives of
all the London companies before them, to answer for playing
in Lent, contrary to the express direction of the Lord Chamber-
lain given through the Master of the Revels. The records
of suburban administration show the Middlesex Justices
trying William Claiton, an East Smithfield victualler, on
20 December 1608, for suffering plays to be performed in his
house during the night season, and on i October 1612 making
an Order for Suppressing Jigs at the End of Plays, on the
ground that the lewd jigs, songs, and dances so used at the
Fortune led to the resort of cutpurses and other ill-disposed
persons and to consequent breaches of the peace. Generally
speaking, the problem of metropolitan stage-control may be
said, during the reign of James I, to have reached a condition
of comparative stability.

As regards the provinces there has been some misappre-
hension. The royal patents of course ran there, and there is
one example of a patent issued to a company which actually
had its head-quarters in a provincial town, that to the
Children of the Queen’s Chamber of Bristol, granted through
the influence of Queen Anne, who had visited Bristol on her
progress in 1613. But in the provinces the patented companies
had no monopoly ; side by side with them still wandered both
unlicensed vagrants and the protected servants of noblemen.
It is true that a Vagabond Act of 1604, which in the main
and with certain exceptions, such as dropping the experiment
of transportation, continued the policy of that of 1597,
has been supposed to have withdrawn the privilege of protec-
tion.^ But the provincial records show that in fact the noble-

* Some interesting light is thrown on the workings of the Vagabond
Acts in the North Riding of Yorkshire by the presentations in Quarter
Sessions Records {North Riding Record Soc.), i. 204, 260 ; ii. no, 119, 197,
At Topcliffe on 2 Oct. 1610 Thomas Pant, apprentice to Christopher

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 305

men*s companies were still afoot, and the provision of the
statute itself, when carefully read, bears quite another inter-
pretation.^ It professes to be declaratory of that of Elizabeth
on which ‘ divers doubtes and questions * had arisen, and
after reciting the catalogue of persons who were to be classed
as vagrants, which includes not only players of interludes,
but also fencers, bearwards, minstrels, begging scholars
and sailors, palmists, fortune-tellers, proctors, and others, it
lays down that no authority shall be given by noblemen
to * any other person or persons ’ ; that is surely, to any of
the persons named in the catalogue, other than the players
of interludes belonging to the noblemen and authorized
under their hands and seals, for whom exception is specifically
made therein.* The system of patents lent itself to certain
abuses by travelling companies. Exemplifications were taken
out in duplicate, and while the regular company remained
in London, a quite distinct one would go on tour with one of
the duplicates and, if necessary, an instrument of deputation
from the man named in the patent of which it was a copy.®
This practice was condemned in 1616 by a warrant of the Lord
Chamberlain, to whose department the supervision of the
issue of playing patents, as well as the general supervision
of the Master of the Revels, appears to have been entrusted.
The same document also condemns a company which had

Simpson of Eg ton, shoemaker and recusant, was released from his inden-
tures on complaining that he had been * trayned up for these three yercs
in wandering in the country and playing of interludes At Helmesley
on 8 July 1612 Christopher Simpson, late of Egton, was presented and
fined as a player, and Richard Dawson, tanner and constable of Stok^ley,
for allowing Christopher and also Robert Simpson of Staythes, shoemaker,
Richard Hudson of Hutton Bushell, weaver, and Edward Lister of Allers-
ton, weaver, to wander as common players of interludes. A similar charge
was made against William Blackbome, labourer and constable of Marion,
as regards Robert Simpson, Richard Knagges of Moorsham, William
Fetherston of Danby, and James Pickering of Bowlby, mason. At
Helmesley on 9 Jan. 1616 a number of gentlemen and yeomen were pre-
sented for receiving players in their houses and giving them bread and
drink. John, Richard, and Cuthbert Simpson, recusants, of Egton, Robert
Simpson, of Staythes, and four other players were fined los. each. There
were similar cases at Hutton Bushell on 4 April 1616, at Thirsk on
10 April 1616 and 7 April 1619, and at Helmesley on 9 July 1616. Pre-
sumably the Simpsons were the same men who brought Sir John Yorke
into trouble with the Star Chamber in 1614 (cf. p. 328).

* Gildersleeve, 28, 35, 38. The origin of the error is probably in the
shoulder-note * No Licence by any Noblemen shall exempt Players ' to
I Jac. /, c. 7, § I, in the R. O. edition of the Statutes.

* The players of Lords Berkeley, Chandos, Dudley, Evers. Huntingdon,
and Mounteagle (Murray, ii. 28. 32, 43, 45, 49, 57). as weU as those of the
Duke of Lennox (cf. ch. xiii), are still traceable after 1604.

* Cf. App. D, No. clviii, and ch« xiii, s.v. Anne’s.

2229*1 X

3o6 the control OF THE STAGE

been travelling under a ‘warrant*, by which is apparently
meant a licence under, the royal sign manual or signet,
used instead of an elaborate and doubtless expensive patent.^
The signet licences were, however, such an obvious convenience
that it was not long before they came to be regularly issued
to players under the administration of the Lord Chamberlain
himself.2 This is a topic which lies rather beyond my
purview. Nor can I dwell at any length on the evidence
which shows that the licences given to players, like other
assumptions of the royal prerogative, did not pass altogether
without criticism from contemporary constitutionalists. I
do not know whether it was a weak point that the statutory
sanction taken for the patents in 1572 was not re-enacted
in 1597. Their wording purported clearly enough to give the
holders an authority to play both within and without the
liberties and freedoms of any cities, towns, and boroughs.
But Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, charging a Norwich
jury on 4 August 1606, appears to have told the justices that
the remedy of the abuses due to players was entirely in their
hands — ‘ they hauing no commission to play in any place
without leaue : and therefore, if by your willingnesse they
be not entertained, you may soone be rid of them *.^ Too
much stress must not be laid upon this, for Coke vigorously
repudiated the accuracy of the printed edition of his charge
from which the passage is taken.^ But Prynne seems to
insinuate a very similar argument in his Histriomastix of
1633,® and in any event the validity of the patents was
terminated by the final ordinance for the suppression of plays
passed by the Long Parliament on 9 February 1648, which
enacted that ‘ all stage-players, and players of interludes, and
common playes, are hereby declared to be, and are, and shall

* Cf. ch. xii, s.v. King’s Revels. A later warrant of 20 Nov. 1622 deals
with the same abuse of players and others who ’ without the knowledge
and approbacon of his maiesties office of the Revels * travel * by reason
of certaine grants comissions and lycences which they haue by secret
meanes procured both from the Kings Maiestie and also from diuerse
noblemen ’ (Murray, ii. 351).

* M. S. C. i. 284 ; Murray, ii. 192.

* The Lord Coke his Speech and Charge. With a Discouerie of the Abuses
and Corruption of Officers (1607) Hj. There is an epistle to the Earl of
Exeter signed R. P., said (D. N. B.) to be Robert Pricket.

^ Coke, Preface to yth Report, * libellum quendam . . . rudem et in-
concinnum . . . quem sane contestor non solum me omnino insciente
fuisse divulgatum, sed . . . ne unam quidem sententiolam eo sensu et
significatione, prout dicta erat, fuisse enarratam ’ ; cf. Gildersleeve, 40 ;
J. Haslewood in Gentleman's Magazine, Ixxxvi. i. 205 ; i N. Q. vii.
37^. 433-

® l^nne, 492, 497,

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY 307

be taken to be, rogues, . . . whether they be wanderers or no,
and notwithstanding any license whatsoever from the King-
or any person or persons to that purpose We, however,
are now concerned, not with the decadence of the stage,
but with its palmy days under Elizabeth and James.

* Hazlitt, E. D. S. 67.

X

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY

[Bibliographical Note. — This chapter mainly rests upon the official
documents in Appendix D, the plague-data in Appendix E, and the
detailed accounts of individual companies in Book III. To the bpoks
and dissertations cited for those sections and for chapter viii may be
added, as studies of the stage in its political aspect, R. Simpson, The
Political Use of the Stage in Shakespeare's Time and The Politics of Shake-
spere's Historical Plays (1874, N. S. S. Trans. 371, 396), S. R. Gardiner,
The Political Element in Massinger (1875-6, N. S. S. Trans. 314), S. Lee,
The Topical Side of the Elizabethan Drama and Elizabethan England and
the Jews (1887-92, N. S. S. i, 143), J. A. de Rothschild, Shakespeare
and his Day (1906), T. S. Graves, Some Allusions to Religious and Political
Plays (1912, M. P. ix. 545), and The Political Use of the Stage during the
Reign of James I (1914, Anglia, xxxviii. 137). The fragments of Sir Henry
Herbert’s office-b^k, showing the working of the censorship from 1623 to
1642, usually cited from the Shakespeare Variorum (1821), and G. Chalmers,
Supplemental Apology (1799), are now conveniently collected in J. Q.
Adams, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert (1917). A useful
study has recently appeared in A. Thaler, The Travelling Players in
Shakespeare's England (1920, M. P. xvii. 489).]

The history detailed in the foregoing chapter represents,
from the point of view of the playing companies, a vexed
progress towards that state of regulative security which, in
the case of any industry dependent upon a permanent habita*
tion and the outlay of capital, is the first condition of economic
stability. More than once in the course of the struggle was
an approach made to a settlement before it was actually
reached. The rather obscure period of the first attempts of
the companies to establish themselves in London was closed
by the experimental patent to Leicester’s men and the fairly
reasonable City regulations of 1574. But the building of the
suburban theatres on the one hand and the aggressiveness of
the preachers on the other broke down the equilibrium ; and
there followed a period of acute conflict, of which the com-
mission to the Master of the Revels in 1581, the City prohibi-
tion of 1582, the appointment of the Queen’s men in 1583, and
the controversy before the Privy Council in 1584 formed the
final stages. The players were victorious, and the result of
their victory was an assured position under the Council and
the Master of the Revels, which was not indeed wholly
accepted by the City, and was seriously threatened in 1596
and 1597, but only to be the more firmly established in the

309

THE ACTOR'S QUALITY

latter year when the central government assumed direct
responsibility for the regulation of the stage throughout
the London area. I think that 1597 must be regarded as the
critical moment at which complete stability was attained ;
the substitution under James I of letters patent for Star
Chamber orders as the licensing machinery was of compara-
tively slight importance. From 1597 onwards it was definitely
the Crown and not the local authorities which determined
the companies to whom, subject to the detailed administrative
control of the Privy Council, the Lord Chamberlain, and his
subordinate the Master of the Revels, the privilege of
playing within the neighbourhood of London should be con-
ceded. And the policy of the Crown, alike under Elizabeth
and under the Stuarts, was consistently in favour of such
solace and recreation for the Sovereign and the subjects as
the players ministered.

And so, tentatively up to 1584, and thereafter with a security
which received final confirmation in 1597, the actor’s occupa-
tion began to take its place as a regular profession, in which
money might with reasonable safety be invested, to which a
man might look for the career of a lifetime, and in which he
might venture to bring up his children. As early as 1574 the
patent to Leicester’s men refers to playing as an ‘ arte and
facultye In 1581 the Privy Council call it a ‘ trade * ; in
1582 a ‘ profession ’ ; in 1593 a * qualitie ’. The order of 1600
explicitly recognizes that it ‘ may with a good order and
moderacion be suffered in a well gouerned estate ’. So that
when Fleetwood takes occasion in 1584 to recall that originally
interludes were merely the by-work of ‘ men for their lyvings
using other honest and lawfull artes, or reteyned in honest
services ’, his argument has already become anachronistic,
not wholly justified even as an antiquarian quibble, and still
less as a serious appreciation of the administrative facts with
which the writer had to deal. The player of the seventeenth
century is in fact as necessary a member of the polity as the
minstrel of the twelfth or the fourteenth ; with this distinction
that, in London at least, he is a householder and not a vagrant,
and is therefore able to perform his function on a larger scale
and with a fuller use of the methods and advantages of
co-operation.

Obviously the player’s status, like any other status in a
civilized community, depended upon the observance on his
side of certain obligations. He had to get his formal authority
or licence for the exercise of his art. He had to respect certain
prescribed limitations of times and seasons. He had to
shoulder certain responsibilities imposed upon him as a

310 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

subject and a citizen. To each of these aspects of his calling
some measure of detailed consideration is due.

A company of players was not in form, like a company of
merchants, a guild or association of independent men. Its
constitution had a mediaeval element, by which the derivation
of playing from minstrelsy is strongly recalled. The nature of
the licence which it must hold, at any rate if it desired to
secure itself from the arbitrary discretion of local justices, was
determined by statute. And this licence, whether it took the
form of a warrant from a nobleman with the confirmation of
the Master of the Revels, or of a royal licence by patent, was
always such as to set up a relation of service between the
company and a * lord Nor is this relation to be dismissed as
a mere empty formality. Probably the players of many
country nobles and gentlemen continued to the end to consist
of their ordinary household servants, who played only at
Christmas and other times of recreation, and mainly at their
lord’s expense.^ With the regular travelling companies, and
particularly with the London companies, it was different.
Financially, at least, they were independent. But even of
these the ‘ service ’, though largely a legal fiction, was not
wholly so. The Statutes of Retainers, kept alive by the
proclamations of 1572 and 1583, forbade the maintenance of
retainers who were not in some real sense household servants.
The consequent application made by his players to the Earl
of Leicester in 1572 does not suggest that the distinction was
a very vital one. Certainly they guard themselves against
being supposed to be asking their lord for a fee. But I think
it is clear that the lord was expected to take some responsibility
for the conduct of those who used his name, and to exercise
some discipline in cases of misdemeanour. It was so in 1559,
when the proclamation against unlicensed plays expressly
called upon noblemen and gentlemen having players to see
that it received attention from their servants. And it must
still have been so in 1583, when the ill behaviour of Worcester’s
men at Norwich was effectively checked by a threat to certify
their lord of their contempt. On the other hand there is
abundant evidence that the lord might be looked to, in time
of need, to intervene for the active furtherance of the interests
of his players, over and above the general recommendation to
favour for his sake, which is common form in the warrants of

• Murray, ii. 77, gives records of seventy-nine * Lesser Men's Companies
many of which appear at one town only, while all have a narrow range.
Naturally the names of the great nobles carried weight over a wider area.
The players in Ratseis Ghost (Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 326) * denied their owae
Lord and Maister, and used another Noblemans name ’.

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 311

protection and even in the royal patents. Thus Leicester is
found writing to the President of the North on behalf of his
men in 1559, Berkeley and Hunsdon to the City in 1581 and
1594 respectively, Nottingham to Middlesex in 1600, Lennox
for his men in 1604 ; while the toleration of Oxford’s and
Worcester’s men as a third London company in 1602 is
expressly stated by the Privy Council to be due to the suit of
the Earl of Oxford to the Queen. On their side the players
no doubt had reciprocal courtesies, if no more, to pay. They
wore the lord’s livery and bore his badge.^ Leicester’s men
refer to their livery in their letter of 1572, and in 1588 they
had occasion to make their complaint to the Norwich Corpora-
tion of a local cobbler ‘ for lewd woords uttered ageynst the
ragged staff A practice of offering up a prayer for the lord’s
well-being at the end of a performance was probably of
ancient derivation, although whether it survived in the public
theatres may perhaps be doubted.^ There are instances, more-
over, which suggest that, if the lord had need of players for
the celebration of a wedding or other festivity, it was to his
own servants that he would naturally turn. Thus Leicester
had his company with him on his expedition to the Nether-
lands in 1585, and it was the Chamberlain’s men who were
called upon to play Henry IV at Hunsdon’s house in the
Blackfriars when he entertained the Flemish ambassador
Verreyken in 1600. Similarly the royal companies, under
both Elizabeth and James, formed integral parts of the royal
household. They were attached to the Lord Chamberlain’s
department, and ranked as Grooms of the Chamber. And on
one occasion at least, the visit of the Constable of Castile in
1604, the King’s and Queen’s men were actually assigned, in
their capacity as Grooms, to the service of the distinguished
strangers. Their exact status is, however, a matter of some
difficulty. The old interlude players had held an independent
position as such, with fees charged originally on the Exchequer
and afterwards on the Chamber, at higher rates than those of

‘ The showman of the royal ape in Taylor's Wtt and Mtrih (cf. p. 267)
wears * a brooch in his hat, like a tooth drawer, with a Rose and Crowne,
and two letters '.

* Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), 135, ‘ I will neither end
with sermon nor with prayer, lest some wags liken me to my L. ( )

players, who when they have ended a bawdy comedy, as though that
were a preparative to devotion, kneel down solemnly, and pray all the
company to pray with them for their good Lord and master ' ; A Mad
World, my Masters, v. ii. 200, ' This shows like kneeling after the play ;
1 praying for my good lord Owemuch and his good countess, our honourable
lady and mistress *. This prayer might be combined with one for the
Sovereign and estates ; cf. chh. xviii, xxii.

311 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

Grooms of the Chamber, and the liveries not of Grooms but of
Yeomen. When they died out, they were replaced by the
Queen’s men of 1583, Howes tells us that these ‘ were
sworn the queen’s servants and were allowed wages and
liveries as grooms of the chamber *. Howes is not quite a
contemporary authority, and makes at least a technical
mistake when he adds that until 1583 ‘ the queene had no
If by ‘ wages ’ he means such annual fees as the
players had received, his statement is not confirmed
by the Chamber Accounts, and it is not very likely that such
payments were put back upon the Exchequer. It is true that
fee-lists, not only Elizabethan but Jacobean, continue to
include eight players of interludes at £3 6^. M, each, but I
doubt whether this can be safely taken as evidence that the
vacancies were filled.^ No doubt, however, Howes was
accurate on the main point, for Tarlton is described in a docu-
ment of 1587 as an ‘ ordenary grome off her majestes chamber ’,
and both Tarlton and Johnson as ‘ groomes of her majesties
chamber ’ in another of 1588. I may add that in a list of the
sixteen ordinary grooms who received allowances at Elizabeth’s
funeral are to be found the names of George Brian and John
Singer.* These had been respectively a Chamberlain’s and an
Admiral’s man, but both seem to have left playing before the
date of the list, and I suspect that they retired on taking
up these active Household appointments. For the King’s
players there is fuller testimony, although most of it is Caroline
rather than Jacobean. The players are not called Grooms of
the Chamber in their patents of appointment ; but this
proves nothing, as most of the Household posts were conferred,
not by patent, but by swearing-in before the Lord Chamberlain
or other high officer. But they received payment as ‘ his
Maiesties Groomes of the Chamber and Players ’, when they
waited upon the Spanish ambassador in 1604, and are entered
in the Chamber Accounts for this payment as a distinct group,
apart from the seven ordinary and four extraordinary grooms
who were also assigned to the ambassador’s service. The
Queen’s men, who waited upon the Flemish commissioners,
are similarly described as being ‘ Groomes of the Chamber
and the Queenes Players *. A few months before the King’s,
Queen’s, and Prince’s players had all received 4J yards of red
cloth each as a livery at the time of James’s coronation pro-
cession.* Nearly a quarter of a century later we find very

> Cf. ch. xiii (Interluders).

* i?. O. Lord Chamberlain's Records, ii. 4 (4).

• N. S. S. Trans. (187 j-g), 15*, from Lord Chamberlain's Records, vol. 58 a,
now ii. 4 (5).

players ’.
interlude

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 313

similar liveries furnished for both the King’s and the Queen’s
men by a series of Lord Chamberlain’s warrants to his Ward- •
robe, which begin in 1622.^ These liveries were renewed every
two years and consisted at first of three, and afterwards of
four, yards of bastard scarlet for a cloak, and a quarter of a
yard of crimson velvet for a cap. These were of course
state liveries, not the * watching ’ liveries of medley-coloured
cloth, at 55. a yard as against the 26s. 8d. paid for the
scarlet.* The Chamberlain’s books of the same period also
contain warrants for the swearing-in of new members of the
King’s and other companies, and in these the players are
directed to be sworn as * grooms of the chamber in ordinary
without fee ’.* These are, as I say, Caroline records, but if we
may assume that the procedure which they disclose was no
novelty, and that the royal players from 1583 onwards held
this intermediate position as ‘ grooms in ordinarv without fee ’
between the ordinary and the extraordinary (jrocms of the
Chamber, we get an explanation of their status which, on the
assumption that Howes was not quite well informed, is at least
consistent with all the few known facts.

The times and seasons at which plays might be given formed,
of course, one of the chief battle-grounds in the controversy
with the preachers ; and it was here that the Puritans, routed
on the main issue of the campaign, were able to secure their
principal victory. From the beginning it was an understood
thing that plays must not be given during the hours of divine
service, either on Sundays, or on the Saints’ days, which con-
tinued long after the Reformation to be observed as public
holidays. This, however, did not prevent the audiences from
gathering, so that the play-houses were already full, while the
bells were still ringing in the empty services.^ The City regula-
tions of 1574 attempted to remedy this scandal by extending
the prohibition to the opening of the doors. The same point
is made in the ‘ Remedies ’ put forward by the City advocates
in 1584. But there was a practical difficulty, which increased
when the theatres in the distant fields or over the water came
into use. Afternoon prayer did not begin until 2 p.m., and if
the theatres waited until 4 p.m., the performances were not

* Sullivan, 250 ; C. C. Stopes in Sh,- Jahrbuch, xlvi. 92 ; from Lord

Chamberlain's Records, ii. 48 ; v, 92, 93. I am not sure whether the velvet
was for a ‘ cap ' or a * cape *. * Sullivan, 253 ; cf. vol. i, p. 52.

* Stopes {supra), I find a confirmatory note to a Household list of 1641
in Lord Chamberlain's Records, iii. i, * Note that th^ Companyes of Players
under the Titles of the Kings, Queenes, Queene of Bohemia, Prince & Duke
of Yorke are all of them sworne Groomes of the Chamber in ordinary
without fee *. I cannot accept Miss Sullivan’s theory that ’ without fee *
means that the players did not have to buy their places.

* Cf. App. C, Nos. xvii, xxxi.

314 the control OF THE STAGE

over, except in the height of summer, before dark, and the
audiences must make their way home as best they could. The
City ‘ Remedy ’ for this was a shortening of the plays ; but
in 1594 Lord Hunsdon suggested that to begin at 2 instead of
4 p.m. might after all be the least of two evils, and this seems
to have been the solution ultimately adopted.^ The proviso
against playing in time of common prayer, which finds a place
in the licence to Leicester’s men of 1574, is not repeated in
any of the Jacobean licences, with the exception of Queen
Anne’s personal warrant to her provincial company in 1606.

Obviously the clash with divine service became of minor
importance when the Puritans had made good their protest
against plays on Sundays, and when, on the other hand, the
theatres came to be open on every week-day, instead of prin-
cipally on holidays. Both of these processes were complete
before the final settlement of the status of players was arrived
at.^ It was the failure to exclude Sundays that above all things
made the City regulations of 1574 inadequate in the eyes of
the preachers, and formed the leading topic of their railings
against the lukewarmness of the ‘ magistrates ’. In the City
itself they had gained this point at least by 1581, with the
assent of the Privy Council, who, while pressing for the tolera-
tion of plays both on ordinary week-days and on holidays, was
quite prepared to concede the sanctity of the Sabbath. With
the potent aid afforded by the ruin of Paris Garden at a
Sunday baiting, the City were able about 1583 to get the
principle extended to the suburbs, although both in 1587 and

‘ Platter in 1599 (cf. ch. xvi, introd.) says that plays were given ‘ alle
tag vmb 2 vhren nach mittag T, S. Graves, in E. S. xlvii. 66, argues
in favour of occasional night performances, and is answered by W. J.
Lawrence in E. S. xlviii. 213. Whatever may have been done before
1574 or thereabouts, I find no later evidence which is not to be explained
either by private performances or by a loose use of * night * for the evening
hour at which plays terminated in winter. Nor can I go with I^wrence
in supposing an exception for Sunday. The Southwark play at 8 p.m.
on Sunday, 12 June 1592, cannot have been at a regular theatre, for
there was none within the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. The allusion in
Crosse's Vertue*s Commonwealth (1603) can quite well be to private plays
(cf. App. C), and Henslowe's entry (i. 83) of a loan of 30s. * when they
f)rrst played Dido at nyght ', on Sunday, 8 Jan. 1598, only suggests to
me the payment by Henslowe of the shot for a supper after the first
performance. Or it may have been a private performance, for Henslowe
does not appear (vide infra) to have opened the Rose on Sundays.

* Cf. App. D, No. XV (1564), ' now daylye, but speciallye on holydayes ' ;
No. xvi (1569), ' on the Sal^th dayes and other solempne feastes com-
maunded by the church to be kept holy ' ; No. xvii (i 571), * vpon sondaies,
holly dales, or other dale of the weke, or ells at night * : No. xxxii (i 574 )»
* on sonndaies and holly dayes, at which tymes such playes weare chefelye
vsed ' ; App. C, No. xxii (1579), * These l^ause they are allowed to play
euery Sunday, make iiii or v Sundayes at least euery weeke '

315

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY

in 1591 the Privy Council had to call the attention of the
county justices to the neglect of the regulation.^ In Southwark
there is mention of a disturbance at a play on Sunday as late
as II June 1592, but as the Lord Mayor intervened, this can
hardly have been at a regular theatre, for there was only the
Rose, which was outside his jurisdiction. On the other hand,
the evidence of Henslowe’s Diary, as interpreted by Dr. Greg,
shows that the prohibition was strictly observed at the
theatres under his control between 1592 and 1597, and also
that the Sunday abstinence was fully compensated for by
continuous playing on every other day of the week.^ It is
probable that the proclamation against Sunday plays, issued
by James I as one of the first acts of his reign, did no more, so
far as London was concerned, than reaffirm an already accepted
practice. More puzzling is the provision in the Council order
of 1600, whereby each of the two privileged companies was
limited to performances on two days in each week. It must
be exceedingly doubtful whether this limitation was ever
in fact observed. There is no evidence in Henslowe’s Diary
of any slackening in the output of new plays by the Admiral’s
men after 1600. And there is no corresponding limitation in
the Jacobean patents. Moreover, an agreement entered into
by Queen Anne’s men in June 1615 specifically contemplates
performances upon six days a week.

The companies were also expected not to play during Lent.
This limitation may have been traditional. It first becomes
explicit in the Privy Council’s permit of 1578 to the Italian
company of Martinelli Drusiano, which is expressed as lasting
to the first week in Lent. In the following year a general
inhibition for the coming and all subsequent Lents was decreed
by the Council. The entries in Henslowe’s Diary show some
observance of the rule during the last decade of the sixteenth
century. Strange’s men in 1592 played right through Lent,
with the exception of Good Friday. The Admiral’s men, on
the other hand, during 1595 to 1600, seem regularly to have

There was a disorder at the Theatre on Sunday, 10 April 1580, but
by July 1581 the Lord Mayor had made an order against Sunday plays,
which Berkeley’s men disregarded. The Privy Council letter of 3 Dec.
1581 to the City accepts the exclusion of Sunday. Gosson, Playes Confuted
(1582), 167, and Field (Jan. 1583), C. iii, acknowledge the change of day.
When therefore Stubbes (i March 1583), 137, criticizes Sunday plays, he
must have the suburbs in mind. Paris Garden fell on Sunday, 1 3 Jan. 1583.
On 3 July 1583 the Lord Mayor told the Privy Council that Sunday
baitings were resumed. The documents of the 1584 controversy, however,
state that as a result of the accident, letters were obtained to banish
plays (and doubtless also baiting) * in the places nere London ’ on the
Sabbath days. Whetstone (1584) also alludes to a 'reforme* by the
‘ magistrate ’ in this matter. - Henslowe, 11. 324.

3i6 the control OF THE STAGE

broken off for some weeks during Lent. In 1595 and 1596
the interval covered all but the first few days; in 1597 it
was less than three weeks, and thereafter the company
played three days a week up to Easter. A reservation was
made for Lent by the Council order of 1600, and in 1601 the
Council sent a special instruction to the Lord Mayor to stop
plays at St. Paul’s and the Blackfriars during the penitential
season. Presumably the same practice prevailed under
James I, for the permission to resume playing in April 1604
is expressed as motived by ‘ the time of Lent being now passt *,
while on 29 March 1615 representatives of the London com-
panies were summoned before the Privy Council, to answer for
playing in Lent contrary to an express direction given them
by the Lord Chamberlain through the Master of the Revels.^
Some light is thrown on this proceeding by the fact that
two years later each of the companies undertook to pay the
Master of the Revels 44s. ‘ for a Lenten dispensation

A Privy Council letter of 1591 imposes one other curious
limitation, with which the Puritans at any rate can have had
nothing to do, upon the players. They are to lie idle upon
Thursdays and leave that day free for bear-baitings and
similar pastimes, which were * allwayes accustomed and
practized upon it ’. I am not sure whether the claim of the
bearwards to Thursday really went back beyond 1583, when
it seems to have become desirable, owing to the impulse to
Puritan sentiment given by the Paris Garden accident, to
substitute some other day for the Sunday upon which baitings
had formerly been usual. Nor does it seem that the attempt
to give a special protection to the royal * game ’ permanently
maintained itself. The Admiral’s men, in spite of Edward
Alleyn’s interest in the Bear Garden, certainly did not yield
the Thursdays from 1594 to 1597, and when about 1614
Henslowe and Jacob Meade had occasion to combine playing
and baiting in the Hope, they had to insert special stipulations
in their agreements with the actors, in order to secure one
day a fortnight for the bears.®

* Cf. Middleton, A Mad World, my Masters (1608), i. i. 38, * Tis Lent
in your cheeks ; the flag's down ' ; T. Earle, Microcosmography, char. 64,
of a player, * Shrove-tuesday hee feares as much as the bawdes, and Lent
is more damage to him then the butcher '.

* Variorum, iii. 65, from Sir Henry Herbert’s papers, which also record
a similar payment in 1618 'for toleration in the holyda3rs *. Herbert
himself sold similar indulgences and in a list of customary Revels fees
drawn up in 1662 includes £3 * for Lent fee ’, together with £3 * for Christ-
masse fee * (Variorum, iii. 266). Prynne, Histriomastijr (1633), 784, notes
the custom of suppressing plays ' in Lent, till now of late *.

* Cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's). About 1617 Prince Charles's men were

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 317

Obviously the privileges given to players were not intended
to exempt them from the ordinary duties and responsibilities
of citizenship. In the first place, they were called upon to
make their contributions to local burdens in the districts in
which they set up their play-houses. To this they had probably
no objection ; on the contrary, they more than once found
that a readiness to pay their tithes for the use of the poor
was an effective method of smoothing away difficulties with
local officials.^ Nor had they less to gain than others from
a reasonable expenditure of money on the repair of the
highways.^

And secondly, they had to exercise a constant watchfulness
against the danger of allowing their play-houses to become the
centres of riot and sedition, and the cognate danger of allowing
matter to creep into their plays which was contrary to public
morals as conceived by those who were not Puritans, or
displeasing to persons of importance, or inconsistent with
the views of Tudor and Stuart governments upon religious
and political questions. The disturbances which form a count
in the sixteenth-century indictments of theatres are not
particularly conspicuous in the seventeenth. There were
bad characters enough, both male and female, amongst the
audience. Pockets might be picked and even modesty
endangered ; and occasionally brawls and bloodshed were
the result.^ But in the more important theatres, such as
the Globe and the Fortune, which made their appeal to the
well-to-do and the fashionable, no less than to the groundlings,

complaining to Alleyn that * intemperate Mr. Meade ' had taken ' the day
from vs which by course was ours

* By 1574 the City had offers to farm their licensing rights * to the
relefe of the poore in the hospitalles ' ; but their regulations of Dec. 1574
provide for direct contributions to the poor and sick by holders of licences
for playing-places. A weekly subsidy to the poor from every stage is
suggesh^ by Walsingham’s correspondent of 1587. Hunsdon, in asking
for the use of the Cross Keys in 1 594, promised that his men would * be
contributories to the poore of the parishe where they plaie accordinge to
their habilities *. In 1600 the Southwark Vestry were negotiating with
the players for tithes and contributions for the poor on the basis of an

* order taken before my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master
of the Revels. In the same year the inhabitants of Finsbury recite the

* very liberall porcion ' of money promised weekly for the relief of the poor
as one of their grounds for assenting to the building of the Fortune. The
accounts of the overseers of Paris Garden between 1611 and 1621 show
varying sums, amounting to about £'4 or £5 a year, as received during
several years from the players at the Swan.

* The Middlesex records for 1616 show the Queen's men at the Red
Bull as in arrear for their contribution, * being taxed by the bench 40s.
the yeare by theire own consentes

* Cf. ch, viii.

3i8 the control OF THE STAGE

the maintenance of order was at least as much in the interests
of the players themselves as in that of any other section of the
community. In avoiding subject-matter of offence, so far as
the texts of their plays were concerned, the companies had
of course the assistance of the Master of the Revels, upon
whom, in view of the unwillingness of the City either to
appoint licensing officers themselves or to accept a nominee
of the Privy Council, the functions of a stage censor had, as
an alternative policy, been conferred.^ The employment of
a royal official for this purpose was in effect a resumption by
the central government of a responsibility which it had already
attempted to discharge during the earlier Tudor reigns, and
had then delegated to the local justices by the proclamation
of 1559. The selection of the Master of the Revels explains
itself naturally enough as an extension of the duties which
already fell to him of scrutinizing and, if need be, ‘ reforming *
the plays proposed for presentation at Court. ^ The actual
establishment of his authority appears to have been a gradual
process. It is tentative and limited to the plays of one com-
pany in the patent for Leicester’s men of 1574. It is as wide
as possible in the commission issued to the Master in 1581,
overriding the proclamation of 1559, and giving him a complete
control, not only over individual plays, but over players, play-
makers, and playing-places generally. Shortly afterwards, in
1584, the Leicester archives record that the credentials of
Worcester’s men at that date included, in addition to the
warrant from their lord, a licence from the Master of the
Revels, from the terms of which it appears that the company
were ‘ bound to the orders prescribed ’ by him, and in par-
ticular that all their plays were to be ‘ allowed ’ by him, and
to have ‘ his hand at the latter end of the said booke they doe
play In London, on the other hand, the correspondence

> As far back as 1549 the City had appointed two Secondaries of the
Compters to license plays ; but this arrangement doubtless terminated
when the King and Council assumed the function; cf. ch. ix. In 1572
the Council were pressing the City to appoint * discreet persons * for the
purpose, and in 1574 suggested the suitability of one Mr. Holmes. But
the City, who claimed to have had profitable offers to farm the licensing,
repeated a former refusal to commit it to any private person. The regula>
tions of 1574 provide for the appointment by the Lord Mayor and Aider-
men of persons to peruse and allow plays. But the Council are still urging,
and the City promising, the appointment of licensers in 1582.

2 Cf. ch. iii.

3 The unauthorized company which stole this licence (cf. ch. xiii, s.v.
Worcester's) is probably that which appeared as the Master of the Revels'
players at Ludlow on 7 Dec. 1583 and at Bath and Gloucester in 1583-4
(Murray, ii. 201, 282, 325). I do not think that Tilney himself had a com-
pany. His predecessor had. Plomer (j Library, ix. 252) notes a Canter-

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 319

of 1582-4 between the Privy Council and the City makes no
mention of the Master, and the Council are still pressing for
the appointment of fit persons to consider and allow of plays
by the City itself. In 1589, however, the Lord Mayor cited
the Master’s ‘ mislike * of the Martin Marprelate plays as a
reason for suppressing them, and a step forward was probably
taken by the appointment in the same year of a commission
to ‘ allow * plays, consisting of the Master himself and of two
assessors nominated by the Lord Mayor and the Archbishop
of Canterbury. I find no later reference to these assessors
and it may be that before long the Master succeeded in divest-
ing himself of their assistance.^ In any case, their functions
did not go beyond the ‘ allowing ’ of the actual plays. The
general licensing of companies and of play-houses remained
with the Master, and by 1592 we find the City acknowledging
their powerlessness to redress the ‘ inconvenience ’ of the
stage without him and debating the advisability of approach-
ing him with a bribe. Henslowe’s Diary discloses the Master
between 1592 and 1597 as regularly licensing both theatres
and plays, and taking fees, which appear to have amounted
to ys, for each new play produced, and 55., 6 ^. and ulti-
mately 105 . for each week during which a theatre was open.^
To some extent the assumption of a more direct control by
the Privy Council in 1597 must have limited his responsi-
bility. But he continued to act as the agent of the Privy
Council or the Lord Chamberlain in transmitting inhibitions
and other orders to the companies.® Bonds had still to be
given to him for the due observance of the regulations.^ And

bury payment, omitted by Murray, in 1569-70, to 'Syr Thomas Bernars
[? Benger's] players. Master of the Queues Maiesties Re veils But this
was before the Act of 1572,

* Possibly the Southwark order for tithes from players, taken before
* my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master of the Revels ’
about 1600, implies some continuance of the commission. The issue of
licences, both for the performance and after 1607 for the printing of plays,
' under the hand of ' the Master (cf. ch. xxii), does not exclude the
possibility of his acting on the report of an expert assessor, and one is
tempted to conjecture that this may have been the position of Segar, who
sometimes licensed for the press as deputy to Buck. But it is clear
from passages in Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book (Variorum, iii. 229-42)
that he at least personally read the * books ’ of plajrs.

* Henslowe, ii. 113, where Dr. Greg inter alia disposes of Mr. Fleay’s
theory that some of the fees entered in the Diary are for licences authonzing
the publication, not the performance, of plays.

® Cf. App. D, No. cliv.

^ The intruding company of 1598 had not been ‘ bound ' to the Master.
The Master’s licence to Worcester’s men in 1583 is described as an
‘ indenture of lycense ’, and the players were * bound to the orders pre-
scribed by the said Edmund Tyllneye '. On 2 Jan. 1 595 Henslowe paid

320 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

he still drew fees from the theatres which were in fact again
advanced in 1599 from lo^. to 15s. a week. Due reservation
is regularly made for his ‘ aucthoritie power priuiledges and
profittes ’ in the majority of the Jacobean patents issued to
the London companies.^ He continued to license those
travelling companies which held no direct royal authority ;
and in the course of the seventeenth century he succeeded in
establishing his jurisdiction over many travelling entertainers
who were not strictly players.^ Above all, it still rested with
him to ‘ allow * the production, even by the patented com-
panies, of individual plays, and about 1607 he undertook also
the allowance of plays for the press, which had previously been
in the hands of licensers appointed under the High Commis-
sion for London.^ A few manuscripts of plays are extant
which have been submitted to the Master of the Revels for
purposes of censorship, notably those of Sir Thomas More

the Master £10 ‘in full payment of a bonde of one hundreth powndes '
(Henslowe, i. 39). This looks as if he had forfeited a recognizance.

* The licence to the Queen's Revels (1604) is an exception. Here there
is no reference to the Master and the allowance of plays is committed
to Samuel Daniel ‘ whome her pleasure is to appoynt for that purpose
Nor is the Master mentioned in the unexecuted draft (c. 1604) for the
Queen's men. Probably the reason is to be found in the existence of
a separate Chamberlain for the Queen’s Household. The Master of the
Revels was of course an officer of the King’s Lord Chamberlain. The
Master’s rights are reserved in the patent actually issued to the Queen’s
men in 1609. Daniel’s licensing had been far from a success ; cf. p. 326.
Oddly enough, whatever Daniel’s legal rights, it appears from his exculpa-
tion of his Phxlotas (q.v.) that the Master did in fact ' peruse ’ that play.

* A Chamberlain’s warrant of 20 Nov. 1622 requires a licence from the
Master for any travellers who ‘ shall shewe or present any play shew
motion feats of actiuity and sights whatsoeuer ’ (Murray, ii. 352). This
was motived by certain irregular licences procured * both from the Kings
Maiestie and also from diuerse noblemen'. The commission of 1581 is
wide enough to cover all * shewes ’ ; possibly the actual practice was
extended when the Act of 1604 restricted the protection of noblemen to
players of interludes proper — a restriction evidently still imperfectly
observed in 1622. The earliest licence for a non-dramatic show on record
is one of date earlier than 5 Oct. 1605 to John Watson, ironmonger, ‘ to
shewe two beasts called Babonnes ’ (Murray, ii. 338 ; cf. ch. xxiv, s.v.
Sir G. Goosecap), and this was a royal warrant, perhaps under the signet.
But on 6 Sept. 1610 Buck issued a licence to * shew a strange lion,
brought to do strange things, as turning an ox to be roasted, d:c.’ ( 5 . P, D.
Jac. /, Ivii. 45), and the keeper of a ' motion ’ in Bartholomew Fair (1614),
V. 5, 18, says, ‘ I have the Master of the ReuelVs hand for it '. Later
examples of signet warrants for shows are in Murray, ii. 342, and of
licences from the Master in Murray, ii. 351 sqq., and Herbert, 46; cf.
Gildersleeve, 64, 72.

* Cf. ch. xxii. Herbert noted at the Restoration (Dramatic Records, 96),
* Severall playes allowed by Mister Tilney in 1 598. As Sir William Long-
sword allowed to be acted in 1598, The Fair Maid of London. Richard
Cor de Lyon. See the Bookes.’

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 321

[c. 1600) and The Second Maiden's Tragedy (1611), and give
interesting indications of the manner in which he appre- •
hended his duties.^ Tilney, in dealing with Sir Thomas More^
was perturbed by two features. The play, as submitted to
him, began with a dispute between Londoners and certain
Lombard aliens, leading up to the riots of ‘ ill May day * and
the reputation won by Sir Thomas More as the restorer of
peace. This was still a ticklish subject at the end of the
sixteenth century, for there had been comparatively recent
disturbances on the alien question, directed against French-
men rather than Lombards, and Tilney therefore went
carefully through the earlier pages, altering here and there
‘ Frenchman * or * straunger * into ‘ Lombard and marking
for omission or alteration certain passages which might be
read as suggestions to the citizens to take matters into their
own hands. In the margin of one passage he wrote * Mend
this ’. Presumably the effect of these ‘ reformations ’ did not
satisfy him, for at the beginning of the first scene he has
inserted what Dr. Greg calls ‘ a very conditional licence ’, but
what is in fact a direction for the complete recast of the first
part of the play by the omission of the dangerous episodes.^
Similarly he was pulled up by a later scene in which More’s
refusal to sign articles sent him by the King seemed to be of
bad precedent for subjects, and here he drew a line through
a substantial section of the dialogue, and added a note that
all must be altered. The Second Maiden's Tragedy is a Jaco-
bean, not an Elizabethan, play, and the censor was Sir George
Buck. He, too, is on the look-out for political criticism, and
political criticism in 1611 was likely to be criticism of King
and Court. The passages, therefore, amended by Buck or at
his instigation are a few which speak lightly of courtiers and
knights and ladies of high position, and one in particular which
seemed to him to dwell with too much point and detail upon
the delicate theme of tyrannicide. But this was merely
verbal caution. He did not attempt to eliminate tyrannicide

' The manuscnpt of The Honest Man's Fortune (1613) has some censorial
notes and an allowance at the end of the book by Herbert on the occcision
of a revival in 1625. Of later manuscripts, that of Sir John Van Olden
Barnevelt (Bullen, O. E. P. li. 10 1) has corrections by Herbert, but no
allowance, and that of Massinger’s Believe As You List (facs. in T. F. T.)
is a second draft, prepared to meet criticisms by Herbert, and allowed
by him ; cf. Gildersleeve, 114, 123.

* The extent to which Tilney's handiwork is apparent in the text is
a matter of great palaeographical difficulty fully studied by Dr. Greg,
who takes the view that the insertions and many of the corrections in
the manuscript were made before it was submitted to Tilney, and are not
an attempt to carry out the revision directed by him. If so, he was very
easy-going as regards willingness to peruse a most disorderly text.

2229*1 Y

322

THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

from the plot, in which it formed an essential element, and
returned the copy duly endorsed with a licence over his
signature * that it ‘ may with the reformations bee acted
publikely One more point shows some development of
censorial practice as between Tilney and Buck. The latter,
presumably with the Act to Restrain Abuses of Players in his
mind, concerns himself not only with politics but with pro-
priety. It is a perfunctory business enough. In half a dozen
places such expletives as ‘ life * and ‘ heart * are excised ; in
many more these and others, such as ‘ mass * and ‘ faith *,
which one would have supposed to be as much or as little
objectionable, remain unquestioned.^

It has been the experience of many governments that the
most rigid censorship of the ‘ books ’ of plays does not afford
a complete guarantee of the inoffensiveness of the performances
actually given upon the stage. A few lines of ‘ gag * are easily
inserted ; an emphasis, a gesture, a ‘ make-up * may fill with
malicious intention a scene which read harmlessly enough in
the privacy of the censor’s study. And as nothing draws like
topical allusions, it sometimes happened that the activities
of the Master of the Revels did not prevent the players from
overstepping the boundaries of what the somewhat arbitrary
susceptibilities of the government would tolerate. It must
not be supposed that the Elizabethan injunction against any
intermeddling with politics or religion on the stage was to be
taken with absolute literalness. Up to a point the players had
a fairly free hand even with contemporary events. They
might represent, if they would, such feats of English arms as
the siege of Turnhout with all realism. ^ They might mock
at foreign potentates, if they did not, as was sometimes the

^ Herbert (Variorum, iii. 235) records a conversation between Charles I
and himself about the language of Davenant's Wits, at the end of which
he noted in his office-book, * The Kinge is pleased to take faith, death,
slight, for asseverations and no oaths, to which I doe humbly submit as
my masters judgment ; but under favour conceive them to be oaths,
and enter them here, to declare my opinion and submission *. I also find
Herbert occasionally expurgating * obsceanes * and ' ribaldry * from plays
(Variorum, iii. 208, 232, 241). But it is obvious from extant texts that
neither he nor his predecessors made any attempt to enforce a high
standard of decency.

2 R. Whyte to Sir R. Sidney on 26 Oct. 1599 (Sydney Papers, ii. 136),

* Two daies agoe, the ouerthrow of TurnhoU, was acted vpon a Stage,
and all your Names vsed that were at yt ; especially Sir Fra, Veres, and
he that plaid that Part gott a Beard resembling his, and a Watchet Sattin
Doublett, with Hose trimd with Siluer Lace. You was also introduced.
Killing, Slaying, and Overthrowing the Spaniards, and honorable Mention
made of your Service, in seconding Sir Francis V ere, being engaged *.
Turnhout was taken from the Spanish by Count Maurice of Nassau, with
the help of an English contingent, on 24 Jan. 1598.

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 323

case, embarrass Elizabeth’s diplomacy in so doing.^ It has
already been made clear that at the beginning of the reign •
Cecil made use of interludes, after the manner of his master
Cromwell, as a political weapon against Philip of Spain and
the Catholics ; and many years after both Philip and James
of Scotland had their grievances against the freedom with
which their names were bandied by the London comedians.^
Similarly, when it was desired that Puritanism should be
unpopular, the players were not debarred from satirizing
Puritans.^ But if the public discussion of religious contro-

• Winwood to Cecil from Paris on 7 July 1602 (Winwood, i. 425),

' Upon Thursday last, certain Itahan comedians did set up upon the
comers of the passages in this towne that that afternoone they would play
I'Histotrc Angloise contre la Roine d'Angleterre \ Winwood protested and
secured an inhibition, but ‘ It was objected to me before the Counsaile
by some Standers by, that the Death of the Duke of Guise hath ben
plaied at London ; which I answered was never done in the life of the
last King ; and sence, by some others, that the Massacre of St. Bartholo-
mews hath ben publickly acted, and this King represented upon the stage
The play introducing Henri IV was probably a revival by the Admiral's
men of Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris, for which Hen^owe was making
advances in Nov. 1601 and Jan. 1602 ; cf. Bk. III. Evidently Elizabeth
got as good as she gave on the stage. On 2 June 1598 Dr. Fletcher
describes to Sir R. Cecil {Hatfield MSS. viii. 190) a recent dumb show
at Brussels in which she was mocked at. On 7 June 1 598 one Mr. Hunger-
ford describes to Essex {Hatfield MSS. viii. 197) another, or perhaps the
same, show at Antwerp, in which also she appeared. In Oct. 1607 Walter
Yonge records in his Dtary (Camden Soc.), 15, a play at the Jesuit College
of Lyons. It lasted two days, and employed 100 actors. An abbess
played the Virgin. Calvin, Luther, and others ‘ with our late good Queen
Elizabeth, condemned ’, were represented. The episodes included ‘ the
meritorious deed intended of gunpowder ; the conspiracy of Babington,
and others, ^igainst Queen Elizabeth ; all which were rewarded with
the joys of Paradise Yonge adds that a storm broke, and ‘ the three
resembling the Trinity, and the abbess were stncken with the hand of
the Ixird, and it was never known what became of them He says that
books were printed about the incident ; there are in fact no less than
five recorded in Arber, iii. 361-4 (cf. App. M).

* Cf. ch. viii. On 20 July 1586 the Venetian ambassador in Spain
reported {V. P. viii. 182) Philip's resentment at 'the masquerades and
comedies which the Queen of England orders to be acted at his expense.
His Majesty has received a summary of one of these which was lately
represented, in which all sorts of evil is spoken of the Pope, the Catholic
religion, and the King, who is accused of spending all his time in the
Escurial with the monks of St. Jerome, attending only to his buildings,
and a hundred other insolences which I refrain from sending to your
Serenit5r'. This is confirmed by Collier, i. 279, from a manuscript Declara^
tion of the True Causes of the Great Troubles supposed to be Intended against
the Realm of England (1592). On 15 April 1598 George Nicolson wrote
from Edinburgh to Burghley {Sc. P. ii. 749), ' It is regretted that the
comedians of London should scorn the king and the people of this land
in their play ; and it is wished that the matter should speedily amended
lest the king and the country be stirred to anger

^ Cf. ch. viii.

324 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

versies became a scandal, as in the case of the Marprelate
* plays, and still more if freedom of speech turned to criticism
of the government itself, as probably happened in The Isle
of Dogs, it very soon became apparent that the time for
toleration was over, and the punishment which fell upon the
companies was swift and sharp and undiscriminating. Some-
times it even happened, in spite of the special pains of the
Master of Revels, that a play was brought to Court which
gave offence. Such a play had to be stopped incontinently
during the Christmas of 1559, another is recorded at a
much later date, which drew some displeasing political morals
from the suits of a pack of cards, and would have brought the
performers into serious disgrace but for the friendly inter-
vention of a councillor with a sense of humour.^ In addition
to the susceptibilities of the government itself, there were
also those of powerful individuals to be considered. Cecilia
of Sweden, who had outstayed her welcome, complained that
her husband was mocked by the players in her presence.*
Tarlton, although a persona grata at Court, got into trouble
for his hits at Leicester and Raleigh, possibly in the very play
on the pack of cards already mentioned.^ A protest from a
descendant of Sir John Oldcastle obliged Shakespeare to
change the original name of his Falstaff. And on 10 May 1601
the Privy Council sent an order to the Middlesex Justices to
examine and, if need be, suppress a play at the Curtain, in
which were presented ‘ the persons of some gentlemen of
good desert and quality that are yet alive, under obscure
manner, but yet in such sort as all the hearers may take notice
both of the matter and of the persons that are meant thereby
A rather inexplicable part was taken by players in the wild
scenes that closed the career of Robert Earl of Essex in 1601.
Essex was a popular hero, and as the prologue to Henry V
shows, a name to conjure with in the theatre. Bacon records
how in August 1599, after his return from Ireland, * did fly
about in London streets and theatres seditious libels That
he should become an object of ridicule rather than of honour
on the boards was one of the bitterest stings in his disgrace.

* Shortly’, he wailed to Elizabeth on 12 May 1600, ‘they will

» Cf. App. C, No. xlv.

* 5 . P. F. xi. 567. Cecilia complained to her brother. King John of
Sweden, ' Another time she being bidden to see a comedy played, there
was a black man brought in, and as he was of an evil favoured countenance,
80 was he in like manner full of lewd, spiteful and scornful words, which
she said represented the marquis, her husband *.

* Bum, 153, notes from Lansd, MS. 232, that the Star Chamber inflicted
a severe punishment for the impersonation of Leicester in a play.

* Bacon (Spedding, ix. 1 77), The Proceedings of the Earl of Essex.

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 325

play me in what forms they list upon the stage.' ^ And when
the last mad step of rebellion was taken in February 1601 it.
was a play, none other than Shakespeare's Richard //, to
which the plotters looked to stir the temper of London m their
favour.^ The curious thing is that in this case, although
Essex and more than one of his followers lost life or liberty,
no very serious results seem to have followed to the company
involved. The incident has been thought to have inspired the
references to an ‘ innovation * and the consequent travelling
of the players in Hamlet, But in fact the Chamberlain’s men
cannot be traced in the provinces during 1601, and they were
admitted to give their full share of Court performances during
the following Christmas.®

For some years after the coming of James, the freedom of
speech adopted by the stage, in a London much inclined to be
critical of the alien King and his retinue of hungry Scots, was
far beyond anything which could have been tolerated by
Elizabeth. The uncouth speech of the Sovereign, his intem-
perance, his gusts of passion, his inordinate devotion to the
chase, were caricatured with what appears incredible audacity,
before audiences of his new subjects. ‘ Consider for pity's
sake,’ writes Beaumont, the French ambassador, on 14 June
1604, ‘ what must be the state and condition of a prince, whom
the preachers publicly from the pulpit assail, whom the come-
dians of the metropolis bring upon the stage, whose wife
attends these representations in order to enjoy the laugh
against her husband,' * Beaumont’s evidence is confirmed by
a letter of 28 March 1605 from Samuel Calvert to Ralph
Winwood, in which he writes that ‘ the play[er]s do not
forbear to represent upon their stage the whole course of this
present time, not sparing either King, state, or religion, in so
great absurdity, and with such liberty, that any would be
^raid to hear them ’.® That in spite of all the companies
continued to enjoy a substantial measure of royal favour,
while speaking well for the good sense of the government,

' S. P. D. Ehz. cclxxiv. 138. * Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain’s).

* It is probably unnecessary to take literally Arabella Stuart’s letter
of 16 Feb. 1603 to Edward Talbot (Bradley, Arabella Sluari, i. 128 :
ii. 1 19), ‘I am as unjustly accused of contriving a comedy, as you (on
my conscience) a tragedy \

* Von Raumer, ii. 206.

* Winwood, ii. 54. Furnivall, Stubbes, 79*, tried in vain to identify
a m^uscript tract on the abusive attacks of players stated by Haslewood
in Gentlefnan*s Magazine (1816), Ixxxvi, i. 205, to be in the British
Museum. Possibly it was Sloane MS. 3543, ff. 19^, 49, a Treatise Apolo-
geticaU for Huntinge, which refers to the * taxation * of James on the stage
for his love of sport ; cf. R. Simpson in N. 5 . 5 . Trans. (1874), 375, and
£. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum (i896)» i. 756.

326 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

may perhaps also justify the inference that by the seventeenth
« century the theatre had so far established itself as an integral
part of London life that a vindictive measure of suppression
had become impracticable. From time to time, however, the
blow fell upon some unusually indiscreet company, or play-
wright, and at one moment, owing to diplomatic complications,
the prospect of suppression became, as will be seen, an immi-
nent danger. Possibly the countenance given by Queen Anne
to the comedians may have been in part responsible for the
long-suffering with which their insolence was met. It could
have been no object for James to underline by any public
action the strained relations between King and Consort which
already embarrassed the conduct of Court life. One of the
companies, indeed, which was most frequently in trouble, was
that which had been taken in 1604 under the direct protection
of the Queen, with the title of ‘ Children of the Queen’s Revels*.
This was a company of boys, in a sense attached to the Court
itself and formerly known as the Children of the Chapel, which
played at the ‘ private * house of the Blackfriars under con-
ditions not quite the same as those of the public theatres. The
patent under which this company was reconstructed in 1604
had exempted its plays from the jurisdiction of the Master
of the Revels, possibly because the Master was an officer of the
King’s Household from which that of the Queen was distinct,
and had committed the licensing of them to the poet Samuel
Daniel, who had been nominated by Anne for the purpose.
Daniel was extremely unfortunate in the exercise of his
functions. Before a year was out, offence had already been
given by the play of Philotas^ of which he was himself the
author. In 1605 followed Eastward Ho ! with some audacious
satire upon the Scottish nation, which brought Jonson and
Chapman into prison, although they maintained that the
offending ‘ clawses * were due not to their pens, but to those
of their collaborator Marston, who had apparently made his
escape. As a result of the misdemeanour of Eastward Ho!
Anne appears to have been induced to withdraw her direct
patronage of the company, which for a time was known, not
as the Children of the Queen’s Revels, but as the Children of
the Revels pure and simple. But it was allowed to go on
playing at the Blackfriars, and here in February 1606 was
produced Day’s Isle of Gulls, another satire on the relations
of English and Scots, which landed some of those responsible
in Bridewell. Further irregularities took place in 1608, of
which a lively account is given in a dispatch of the French
ambassador, M. de la Boderie. The company produced two
offending plays in rapid succession. Of one, now lost, which

3^7

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY

satirized James in person, the author was probably John
Marston. The other, which provoked the ambassador to
protest by its allusions to the domestic arrangements of the
French king, was Chapman’s Byron} A general inhibition of
plays was now ordered, but De La Boderie correctly antici-
pated that James’s anger would soon be mollified, especially
as the four other London companies had offered an indemnity
which he estimates at what seems the incredibly high figure
of 100,000 francs. He thought that similar episodes would be
prevented in future by refusing allowance to plays whose
subjects were taken from contemporary history. This may,
in fact, have been the solution adopted, as a standing order
against the representation of any ‘ modern Christian King ’
on the stage is quoted in 1624.2 Clearly, however, it left the
even more dangerous resources of allegory and of historical
parallel still open to the ‘ seditious ’ playwright. ^ The Revels
boys seem again to have been in trouble in 1610 owing to an
offence taken by Lady Arabella Stuart at a passage of Ben
Jonson’s Epicoene^ which she seems to have misunderstood.

The Paul’s boys vaunt their abstention from libels in the
prologue to their Woman Hater of 1606. But it must not be
supposed that the dramatic indiscretions were limited to a
single company. Even the King’s men themselves, though
probably without any intention to oft end, sometimes mis-
judged the limits of what was permissible. The Earl of
Northampton haled Ben Jonson before the Privy Council for
his Sejanns of 1603. On 18 December 1604 ^ Court gossip

‘ Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).

* Sir Edward Conway to the I^vy Council, 12 Aug. 1624 (Chalmers,
Apology, 500, from 5 . P. D, Charles I, clxxi. 39), ' His Majesty remembers
well there was a commandment and restraint given against the repre-
senting of any modern Christian Kings m those stage-plays This was
written about the performance of Middleton’s A Game of Chess, reflecting
on the Spanish policy of James I, by the King’s men ; cf. M 5 . C. 1. 379.
Other post-Shakespeanan indiscretions were a performance of a play on
the Marquis D'Ancre by an unnamed company in 1617 (M. S. C. 1, 376),
and one of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt by the King's men in 1619
(Bullen, 0 . E. P. iv. 381, from S. P. D, James cx. 37) ; cf. Gildersleeve, 113.

* This work is not directly concerned with the literary content of stage-
plays. But I may be allowed to express the opinion that the search for
the ' topical ' in Elizabethan drama ha.s been pushed beyond the limits
of good sense. Thus I agree with P. W, Long, The Purport of Lyly's
Endtmton (Af. L.A. xxiv. 164), that there is little ground for the elaborate
theories of a dramatization of Elizabeth's personal amours propounded
successively by N. J. Halpin, Oberon’s Vision {Sh. Soc. 1843), G. P. Baker,
Lyly's Endymion (1894), xli, and R. W. Bond, Works of Lyly (1902), lu. 81.
Similarly the conjectures of R. Simpson in his School of Shakespeare (1878)
and elsewhere, and of Fleay, and of most of the writers, other than Small,
on the * war of the theatres ’ require handling with the utmost caution.

328 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

writes of a play of Gowry^ no longer extant, that ‘ whether
-the matter or the manner be not well handled, or that it be
thought unfit that Princes should be played on the stage in
their lifetime, I hear that some great councellors are much
displeased with it, and so ’tis thought shall be forbidden
A somewhat vague allusion to an ‘ unwilling error ’ of players
and a consequent restraint, contained in the epilogue for a
revival of Mucedorus^ first published in i6io, may possibly
relate to some later episode not otherwise recorded, but
possibly only to the Byron episode, with which the King’s men
had nothing directly to do. Nor do we know who were the
‘ much-suffering actors ’ of Daborne’s ‘ oppressed and much-
martird Tragedy’, A Christian Turned Turk, of about the
same date. Conceivably this is itself the play for which
Mucedorus apologizes. Even provincial plays sometimes
brought their promoters before the Star Chamber. Sir Edward
Dymock was imprisoned and fined £1,000 in May 1610 for a
scurrilous play against the Earl of Lincoln on a Maypole
green. 2 And what seems a curiously belated incident is-
recorded in 1614, when Sir John Yorke suffered a similar
fate for encouraging some vagrant players to perform an
interlude in favour of the Popish religion.®

And when players had got their warrants and their licences,
and signed their recognizances to the Master of the Revels,
and paid their tithes, and made up their minds to observe the
taboos of Sunday and of Lent, and to purge their plays of all
perilous stuff, they had still to encounter the ordinary changes

* Winwood, ii. 41. ^ Gildersleeve, 108, from Hist. MSS. iii. 57.

• 7 N. Q. iii. 126 ; Hist. MSS. iii. 62 ; S. P. D. Jac. I, Ixxvii. 58 (John
Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton) ; Bum, 78, from Harl. MS. 1227.
Yorke was fined and imprisoned with his wife and brothers, ‘ pur admittinge
de certeigne comon players (viz*) les Simpsons de player en son meason
un enterlude in q. la fuit disputation perenter Popish preist et English
minister et le preist est de convince le minister in argument et le weapon
de le minister esteant le bible et le preist le crosse et le Diabole fuit
counterfeit la de prender le English minister et son Angle prist le preist
per q. enterlude le religion ore profeste fuit grandment scandall et pluss
del audience fueront recusants, . . , Le cheife Justice [Coke ?] dit q.
players de enterludes sont Rogues per le statute . . . et le very bringing
de religion sur le stage est libell.' On the career of the Simpsons, cf.
ch. ix. The actual offence may have been some years earlier than the
Star Chamber sitting of 1614, for Devon, 261, records a payment to the
Keeper of the Gatehouse at Westminster for the diet of Lady Julian, wife
of Sir John Yorke, as a prisoner from 5 Nov. 1611 to 13 Oct. 1613. The
Yorkes were not of those who learn by expenence, for in 1628 the Star
Chamber sentenced Christopher Malloy for playing the devil in a per-
formance at Sir John Yorke’s house m Yorkshire, in which part he carried
King James on his back to hell, and alleged that all Protestants were
damned (Bum, 119).

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 329

and chances incident to all mortality. The profits swelled in
term time and dwindled in vacation.^ Easter, Whitsuntide,
Bartholomew Fair, were recurring seasons of prosperity.^
Were the streets full for such an occasion as the entry of an
ambassador, the theatres reaped their harvest.^ A period of
public mourning, on the other hand, as at the deaths of
Elizabeth and of Prince Henry, meant the cessation of busi-
ness.^ Political changes — although, like the other elements
of Stuart society, the players probably paid little attention to
the forces that were gathering for their ultimate overthrow —
might prove more disastrous still. But the dreaded enemy,
in whose mysterious workings the Puritans recognized a
direct expression of the wr'ath of God, was undeniably the
plague. The menace, and too often the actual reality, of
plague, in a city whose growth had far outstripped the
advance of sanitary knowledge, was one of the principal
domestic preoccupations of Elizabethan administrators. And
the precaution, which was always resorted to, of forbidding
public assemblies as probable centres of infection, reacted
terribly upon theatrical enterprise. A study of the plague
calendar which forms an appendix to the present volumes will
show that there were three grave visitations of plague during
the years which it covers, in 1563, in 1592-4, and in 1603 ;
that in the long period 1564 to 1587 following the first visita-
tion, and in the shorter period 1604 to 1609 following the
third visitation, plague had become endemic, generally
showing itself from July to November and reaching its maxi-
mum in September or October ; that during these periods
certain years, such as 1579 1580 in the one and 1604 in the

other were comparatively free ; and that probably during
1588-91, and certainly during 1595-1602 and 1610-16, plague
was so far absent as to be practically negligible. In fact, after
1609 plague did not again become a serious factor in London

* Dekker, Work for Armourers (1609, Works, iv. 96), * Tearme times,
when the Twopeny Clients and Peny Stinkards swarme together to heere
the Stagehtes

* Dekker, The Dead Tearme (1608, Works, iv. 22), of Bartholomewtide,
* when thou (O thou beautifull. but bewitching Citty) . . . allurest people
from all the comers of the land, to throng in heapes, at thy Fayres and
thy Theators

* Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606, Works, ii. 52), * The
players prayd for his [Sloth's] comming : they lost nothing by it, the
comming in of tenne Embassadors was never so sweete to them, as this
our sinne was : their houses smoakt every after noone with Stinkards
who were so glewed together in crowdes with the steames of strong breath
that when they came foorth, their faces lookt as if they had beene per-
boyld *.

^ Cf. App. D, Nos. cxxxi, ch.

330 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

life until 1625. The greatest developments of the Elizabethan
‘ drama thus coincide with the longest periods of exemption,
and perhaps this simple physical fact has something to do
with the break-down of the Puritan opposition and the settle-
ment of theatrical conditions in 1597. Certainly the plague-
some years 1564-87 are marked by a series of inhibitions of
plays on account of plague, some of which seem to be hardly
justified by the actual state of things prevailing, and suggest
that the Privy Council occasionally found it convenient to
avoid controversy with the City by acquiescing in an inhibi-
tion for which the dread of infection was little more than the
ostensible reason. This tendency seems to have come very
near to bringing about a regular autumnal close season for
plays. Ultimately, however, a different principle of regula-
tion was adopted. This was based upon the showings of the
plague-bill, a weekly summary of deaths from plague and
from other causes respectively, prepared from returns rendered
on behalf of each of the 109 parishes within the City area and
a few of those in the suburbs.^ The first indication of an
appeal to this criterion is to be found in the documents belong-
ing to the inquiry of 1584, to which the players appear to have
contributed the proposal that their activities should continue
to be tolerated so long as the deaths from plague in any one
week did not exceed fifty. The City questioned the security
afforded by this figure, and as an alternative offered toleration
whenever the deaths from all causes should have remained
below fifty for three weeks together. It is difficult to say
whether this reply was intended to be taken seriously.
Probably not, in view of the general attitude adopted in
the argument of which it forms part. If it had been applied
to the years 1578-82, for which plague-bills are extant, there
would have been only fifteen weeks of playing during the
five years, six weeks in 1580, and nine weeks in 1581.^ The
precise issue of the discussion of 1584 is unknown ; but the
principle then mooted is found in effective operation during the
seventeenth century. Most of the patents do not make any
specific reservation for times of plague, but that for the King’s
men, issued during the plague of 1603, the unexecuted
draft for the Queen’s men are expressed as coming into opera-
tion ‘ when the infection of the plague shall decrease ’, and
more precisely in the case of the Queen’s men ‘ when the
infeccion of the plague shall decrease to the nomber of thirtie
weekly within our Citie of London and the liberties therof *.
Similarly the Privy Council letter of 9 April 1604 in allowance

‘ Cf. App. E.

^ The full tables are in Murray, ii. 181.

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 331

of the resumption of plays is guarded by the proviso ‘ except
there shall happen weeklie to die of the plague aboue the
number of thirtie within the Cittie of I^ndon and the liberties
therof ; att which time we think it fitt they shall cease and
forbeare any further publicklie to playe untill the sicknes be
again decreaced to the saide number This criterion of
thirty deaths was much less favourable to the players than
that of fifty which they had themselves suggested in 1584.
It appears to have ruled until about 1607 and then to have
been replaced by the more liberal allowance of forty, which is
the number specified in the later patents of 1619 and 1625 to
the King’s men.^

It is clear that a plague, if at all prolonged, hit the players
very hard, partly because it was customary to divide up the
profits weekly or even daily, and the companies, as distinct
from prudent individuals, seem to have kept no reserve funds.
In particular the plague of 1592 -4 forms a regular watershed
in the history of the companies. Some went under altogether ;
others, such as the famous Queen’s men, failed for ever after
to recover a foothold in the metropolis. The reconstructed
organizations of 1594 have practically no continuity with
those in existence up to 1392. The obvious resource in a
time of inhibition was to travel, since a London plague did not
necessarily extend far into the provinces.^ It was a regrettable
necessity. In favourable economic conditions, the London
companies tended to grow, to effect amalgamations, to occupy
more than one theatre,^ Travelling, for more than a few

‘ Your Five Gallants (1607), iv, 2. 30, ‘ If the bill down rise to above
thirty, here's no place for players ' (cf. App. E. s. a. 1605) ; Ram Alley
(1607-8), iv. I, ‘ I dwindle as a new player does at a plague bill certefied
forty '. Thorndike, Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher upon Shake-
speare, 16, doubts whether the theatres can in fact have been wholly
closed from Aug, i6o8 to Dec. 1609, when the bill was almost continuously
over 40. I think that Murray, ii. 175, sufficiently answers some of his
points, but in Shakespeare's Theater, 241. he cites Keysar v. Burbage
(cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel) as evidence that the King's played at Blackfriars
during the plague season of 1609. Both disputants seem to have over-
looked the special payments to the King's men (App. B) for private
practice before the Christmases of 1608-9 and 1609-10. It is possible
that they were allowed, in spite of a general restraint, to use the Black-
friars for this purpose, and even admit a select audience. If a similar
relaxation was given to the Revels at Whitefriars, the dating of Epicoene
in * 1609 ' would be explained. I do not agree with Murray that it is
likely to have been produced in the provinces. After all, the plague bill
was well under 40 by 7 Dec. 1609, although it went up to 39 again on
28 Dec.

• In 1574, a restraint covers 10 miles from the city ; in 1581 (a civic
precept). 2 miles ; in 1593, 7 miles ; in 1594, 5 miles ; in IS97» 3 miles.

^ Cf. App. D, Nos. Ixxii, Ixxv, and the use of the Curtain as an ' easer *

332 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

summer weeks, meant the reduction of establishments to the
level of provincial profits, the breaking up of partnerships, the
division of books and apparel, the dismissal of hired men,^
But plague was inexorable. Reluctantly the drums and
trumpets were bought, the last stoup was quaffed at the
Cardinal’s Hat, and the ruffiers of London streets resigned
themselves to the hard life of country * strowlers On the
road, with his wagon, the actor necessarily laid aside the
conditions of a householder, and reverted to those of his
grandfather, the minstrel.^ And it is fair to say that, as a rule,
although there were Puritans in the provinces as well as in
London, he received a minstrel’s welcome. His advent,
about 1574, to a western borough is thus described by one

to the Theatre (ch. xvi) ; also the relations of the Admiral's and Strange's
during 1589-94.

‘ Strange’s men petitioned c. 1592 (App. D, No. xcii), ‘ oure Companie
is greatc, and thearbie our chardge intoUerable, in travellinge the Countrie,
and the contynuance thereof wilbe a meane to bringe vs to division and
seperacion '. My impression is that, when they did have to travel in 1592
or 1593. Pembroke's (cf. ch. xiii) budded off from them. Their own
travelling warrant was for 6 men, but this does not exclude hirelings.
The provincial records do not give much evidence as to the actual size
of travelling companies. The strength of seven companies which visited
Southampton in 1576-7 (Murray, ii. 396) ranged from 6 to 12. I incline
to agree with Murray and W. J. Lawrence (T. Z.. 5 ., 21 Aug. 1919) that
the average may be put at about 10 for the latter part of the sixteenth
century and that it grew in the seventeenth. A Lord Chamberlain’s
licence of 1621 (Murray, ii. 192) sets a limit of 18. Probably 10 men,
duplicating parts, could play many of the London plays without altera*
tion, but obviously not the more spectacular ones.

* Dekker, The Wonderfull Yeare (1603, WorkSp i. 100), * The worst
players Boy stood vpon his good parts, swearing tragicall and busking
oathes, that how vilainously soeuer he randed, or what bad and vnlawfull
action soeuer he entred into, he would in despite of his honest audience
be halfe a sharer (at leaste) at home, or else strowle (thats to say trauell)
with some notorious wicked floundring company abroad ' ; News from
Hell (1606, Works, ii. 146), ‘ a companie of country players, . . . that with
strowling were brought to deaths door ' ; Belmdn of London (1608, Works,
iii. 81), * Nor Players they bee, who out of an ambition to weare the best
lerkin (in a Strowling company) or to Act great Parts, forsake the stately
and our more than Romaine Cittie Stages, to trauel vpon the hard hoofe
from village to village for chees & butter-milke ' ; Lanthorne and Candle-
light (1608, Works, iii. 255), * Strowlers ; a proper name given to country
players that (without socks) trotte from towne to towne vpon the hard
hoofe'; The Raven* s Almanac (1609, Works, iv. 196), * Players, by reason
they shal have a hard winter, and must travell on the hoofe, will lye
sucking there for pence and twopences, like young pigges at a sow newly
farrowed '.

® ' Paid to the plaiers with the waggon ’ (Exeter, 1576-7) ; ' Mis-
demeanoure done in the towne vppon misusage of a wagon or coache of
the Lo. Bartlettes [Berkeley's] players ' (Faversham, 1 596-7) ; Dekker,
Satiromastix, 1 522, of Horace- Jonson, ' Thou hast forgot how thou amblest
(in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the high way ' ; cf. ch. xi.

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 333

R. Willis, in a half-autobiographical, half-religious, treatise
entitled Mount Tabor ^ published in 1639 : ^

‘ In the City of Gloucester y the manner is (as I think it is in other like
corporations) that when Players of Enterludes come to towne, they
first attend the Mayor, to enforme him what noble-mans servants
they are, and so to get licence for their publike playing ; and if the
Mayor like the Actors, or would shew respect to their Lord and Master,
he appoints them to play their first play before himselfe, and the
Aldermen and common Counsell of the City ; and that is called the
Mayors play, where every one that will comes in without money,
the Mayor giving the players a reward as hee thinks fit, to shew respect
unto them. At such a play my father tooke me with him, and made
me stand betweene his leggs, as he sate upon one of the benches,
where wee saw and heard very well.’

The account given by Willis receives general confirmation
from the numerous entries with regard to players exhumed
from the municipal archives not only of Gloucester itself, but
of many other towns, and notably Canterbury, Dover,
Southampton, Winchester, Exeter, Plymouth, Barnstaple,
Oxford, Abingdon, Marlborough, Bath, Bristol, Shrewsbury,
Chester, York, Newcastle, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry,
Stratford-on-Avon, Maldon, Ipswich, Cambridge, and Nor-
wich.* As a rule the information consists of a record in the
annual accounts rendered by the Chamberlains or other
borough treasurers of the ‘ rewards * paid to the companies
for performing the ‘ Mayor’s play ’. These are often stated
to have been paid at the ‘ appointment * of the Mayor, or of
the Mayor and the Aldermen or other body who were his
‘ brethren The name of the company is generally given ;
sometimes the date of the performances, and more rarely the
name of the play or some other detail which struck the fancy
of the Chamberlains, is added. Sometimes, moreover, there
is subsidiary expenditure to record ; a stage has to be put
up and lit ; * damage done has to be repaired ; ^ the players

> R. W., Mount Tabor, no (repr. Harrison, iv. 355), Upon a Stage-play
which I saw when I was a child. The play was the morahty of The Castle
of Security ; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 189.

* Cf. Bibl. Note to ch. xii.-

* ‘ For lynks to give light in the euenyng ' (Bristol, 1577); * for candells
and torches then spent ’ (Canterbury, 1574) ; * for the skafowld ' (Exeter,
1604-5) ; * to make a scaffolde in the Bothall * (Gloucester, 1559-^, with
similar entries in other years up to 1 568) ; 'a pounde of candelles *
(Gloucester, 1561-2) ; * for nayles . . . for layeing the tymber off ye stage
together ' (Maidstone, 1568-9) ; ' bordes that was borowed for to make
a skaffold to the Halle ' (Nottingham, 1572) ; * for bearinge of bordes
and other furniture* (Plymouth, 1580-1); * for setting up stoopes for
players * (Stafford, c. 1616).

* ‘ For amendynge the seelynge in the Guildhall that the Enterlude

334 the control OF THE STAGE

are entertained with the municipal courtesy of ‘ wine and
sugar or with a * drinkinge ‘ banket *, or * breakfast ’ at
their inn.^ At Gloucester the entertainment, of ‘ wine and
chirries took place in the house of ‘ Mr. Swordbearer *, an
official of the corporation. In the main the customs of the
different towns seem to have been singularly uniform, but
here and there variations of detail present themselves. Thus
the mayor’s play was not everywhere, as at Gloucester, open
to all comers. A ‘ free * play is noted at Newcastle ; at Bath
and Canterbury on the other hand there was a ‘ gathering *,
supplemented by the town’s reward.^ At Leicester the same
arrangement prevailed up to the end of the sixteenth century.
The ‘ gathering * was levied upon the members of the two
councils known as the ‘ Twenty-four ’ and the ‘ Forty-eight ’ ; and
orders are upon record limiting this liability to performances
by the royal companies or the servants of privy councillors.®
In 1590-1 collections were also taken ‘ at the hall dore ’.

players had broken downe there this yeare ' (Barnstaple, 1 593-4) ; * for
mending the bord in the Yeld hall and the doers there, after my L. of
Leycesters players who had leave to play there ’ (Bristol 1577-8) ; ‘ for
mending of ii forormes which were taken out of George Chappie and set
in the Yeld hall at the play, and by the disordre of the people were
broken * (Bristol, 1581) ; ‘for mendinge the cheyre in the parlor at the
Hall . . . which was broken by the playars ‘ (Leicester, 1605) ; ‘ for
mendinge the glasse wyndowes att the towne hall more then was given
by the playors whoe broake the same ‘ (Leicester, 1608) ; &c.

‘ Murray, ii, 205, 229, 247, 261-3, 277-81, 284-5, 377 ~ 8 »

* Ibid. 202, 224, ‘ Given to the Queens plaiers xix* iiij^, and was to
make it up xxvj® viij<i that was gathered at the benche * (Bath, 1587) ;
‘ XV® beside the gatheringe ' (Bath, 1 588) ; * xv® besides that which
was given by the companie ' (Bath, 1592) ; ‘ iij* viij<* on and besyde the
benevolens of the people ' (Canterbury, 1549) ; G. B. Richardson, Extracts
from the Municipal Accounts of Newcastle ^ ‘ the Erie of Sussessx plaiers
in full payment of for playing a free play, commanded by M' Maiore *
( 1594 )-

* Kelly, 197, 209, 247. On 22 Nov. 1566 a Corporation ‘ Act agaynst
Waystynge of the Towne Stock * laid down that at plays there should
be no ‘ greate alowance ‘ out of the stock for rewards to players, but that
* euery one of the Maiores Brethren & of the xlviij beinge fequyred, or
havinge sommons by the comaundement of M'. Maior for the tyme beinge
to be there shaU beare euery one of theym his & theire porcion Tlds
was confirmed on 4 Jan. 1570. On 16 Nov. 1 582, ‘ It is agreed that frome
henceforthe there shall not bee anye ffees or rewards gevon by the Chamber
of this Towne, nor anye of the xxiiij** or xlviij^^ to be charged with anye
payments ffor or towards anye Bearewards, Beearbaytings, Players, Playes,
Enterludes or Games, or anye of theym except the Queues Maiesties or
the Lords of the Privye Counsall, nor that afiye Players bee suffred to
playe att the Towne Hall (except before except) & then butt onlye before
the Mayor & his bretheme, vppon peyne of xl® to be lost by the Mayor
that shall suffer or doe to the contrarye, to be levyed by his successour,
vpon peyne of v»‘ if he make default therein On 30 Jan. 1607, ' It is

335

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY

A Bridgnorth order of 1570 that no charge should be put
upon the town fund appears to be exceptional at this date,
and did not prove permanent.^ The ‘ rewards ’ entered
in the accounts are generally round sums ; where they are
broken, they probably went to make up the results of the
‘ gatherings ’ to round sums. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s
reign the amounts often do not exceed a few shillings, but
a general tendency to increase is apparent throughout the
next half-century, and by 1616 rewards of £2 and even £3
are not uncommon. The establishment of the Queen’s men
in 1583 led to a rise in the rate of reward for that company,
which in course of time brought about increased generosity
to others.^ The highest sums I have noted were £4 to the
Queen’s men at Ipswich in 1599, to various companies at
Coventry from 1612 onwards. Nottingham distinguished
itself by economy, and did not go beyond 20s. at the best.
In most places the rates fluctuate considerably to, the end;
being determined partly by the importance of the ‘ lord ’ and
his relations to the town, partly in all probability by the
opinion of the stage held by the mayor or the town, partly,
one may hope, by the merits of individual plays and their
interpreters. Commonly enough, the mayor’s play took place
in the guild-hall, in spite of the criticisms of those who,
whatever their real motives, alleged the damage done and
the interruption to municipal business.® For subsequent

agreed that non of either of the Twoe Companies shalbee compelled at
anie tyme hereafter to paye towards anie playes, but such of them as
shalbee then present at the said playes : the Kings Maiesties playors, the
Queenes Maiesties playors, and the young Prince his playors excepted ;
and alsoe all such playors as doe l^longe to anie of the Lords of his
Maiesties most honorable Privie Counsell alsoe excepted ; to theise they
are to paye accordinge to the auncyent custome, havmge warnynge by
the Mace bearer to bee att euerye such play

‘ Murray, ii. 206, * Order by the bailiffes and 24 aldermen, as also by
the comburgesses,! that no playars or berwardes shalbe receved upon the
Townes chardges, but if any will see the same plaies or bere baytinges,
the same must be upon there owne costes and chardges

* When performances were prohibited at Chester in 1596 the city fixed
the scale of ' gratuity ' at 20s. for the Queen's players and 6s. Sd, for
noblemen's players (Morris, 333), The Queen's men were ‘ much discon-
tented ' with 6s. at Dunwich in 1 59^-7 {Hist. MSS., Vartotis Collections,
vii. 82).

3 * Forasmuch as the grauntinge of leave to stage players or players
of interludes and the like, to act and represent theire interludes playes
and shewes in the towne-hall is very hurtfull troublesome and inconvenyent
for that the table, benches and fourraes theire sett and placed for holdinge
the Kinges Courtes are by those meanes broken and spoyled. or at least
wise soe disordered that the Mayor and bayliffes and other officers of the
saide courts comminge thither for the administration of justice, especially
in the Pipowder Courts of the said Towne, which are there to bee holden

336 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

performances other quarters had often to be found. These were
ordinarily in an inn ; ^ occasionally in the church itself or
the churchyard.^ Great Yarmouth had its specially provided

* game house * ; a theatre contemplated at York in 1608-9
was to have its own company, as ‘ a means to restrayne the
frequent comminge of other stage players \ but the scheme
was never actually carried out.^

To some extent the evidence of the accounts can be eked out
by that of other records throwing a more direct light upon the
responsibilities assumed by the civic authorities in regard to
plays. Singularly interesting is the register of the Mayor’s
Court at Norwich, in which are recorded the attendances of
players on their arrival in the town to submit their credentials
and obtain leave for their performances.^ The patent com-
panies produced their letters patent in original or in exempli-
fication, in addition to which the Court seems to have expected
some instrument of deputation, if none of the men actually

twice a day yf occasion soe require, cannot sit there in such decent and
convenient order as becometh, and dyvers other inconvenyences do there-
upon ensue. It is therefore ordered by generall consent that from hence-
forth no leaue shall bee graunted to any Stage players or interlude players
or to any other person or persons resortiuge to this towne to act shewe
or represent any manner o| interludes or playes or any other sportes or
pastymes whatsoeuer in the said hall * (Southampton, 1623) ; * Forasmuch
as we finde the glass windows in the Council Chamber to be much broken,
and the city thereby suffereth much damage, ordered that no plaies nor
players be suffered to have any use thereof ' (Worcester, 1627). An earlier
Worcester order had limited players to ‘ the lower end onlie * of the guild-
hall. At Chester in 1615 the exclusion of players from the hall was openly
based on ‘ the common brute & scandall ' due to * convertinge the same
beinge appointed & ordained for the judicial hearinge & determininge of
criminall offences, & for the solempne meetinge & concourse of this howse
into a stage for plaiers & a receptacle for idle persons

‘ ‘At the New Ynn * (Abingdon, 1559); * Certen playars, playinge
uppon ropes at the. Crosse Keys* (Leicester, 1590). Worcester's men
played at Norwich in 1583 * in their hoste his hows *, and the Queen’s
men in the same year at the Red Lion. A Norwich order of 1601 forbade
plays at the White Horse in Tombland. A Salisbury order of 1624 laid
down that all plays should in future be at the George in High Street.
Where the house of a named citizen is given as the play-place, one may
perhaps generally infer an inn ; but in 1573 Leicester's men seem to have
played at Bristol ‘in the Mayors house', and at Plymouth in 1559-60
‘ players of London ' performed ‘ in the vycarage '.

* ‘ In the churche ' (Doncaster, 1574) ; ‘in the colledge churche yarde '
(Gloucester, 1589-90) ; ‘ in the churche lofte ' (Marlow, 1608-9) ; ‘ in the
churche' (Plymouth, 1559-60, 1565-6, I 573 ~ 4 ) : ‘in XXe churche'
(Norwich. 1589-90) ; ‘ the Chappell nere the Newhall ' (Norwich, 1616) ;

* because they should not play in the church ' (Syston, 1602). On the
religious opposition to this practice, cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 191.

* M. Sellers, in E. H. R. xii. 446, from Corporation Minute Book, xxxiii,
f. 187.

* Murray, ii. 335

THE ACTOR'S QUALITY 337

named in the document were present.^ The nature of the
evidence forthcoming from other companies is not so clearly ’
specified, but no doubt it consisted of the warrant of appoint-
ment by their lord, and after 1581 of the confirmatory licence
from the Master of the Revels. Worcester’s men were in a
difficulty at Leicester in 1583 because, although they could
produce the warrant from their lord, their licence from the
Master had been purloined by another company.* It was
probably as a quite special privilege that, when Strange’s and
Sussex’s men travelled in 1593, they carried with them letters
of assistance from the Privy Council itself. It may be gathered
from the terms of the Norwich entries that the Court regarded
its own permission or ‘ licence * as essential before players
were entitled to set up their ‘ bills’ or give their performances
within its jurisdiction. The lord’s warrant might protect his
servants from the penalties of vagabondage ; but it was not
necessarily accepted, in the provinces any more than in
London, as overriding the traditional right of the municipal
governments to control the entertainments which might have
serious results both upon the morality and the order of their
areas. On the other hand, even if the plays had been less
popular than they were, the livery of the Queen or of a powerful
noble was not a thing to be lightly flouted. Perhaps the
difficulty was solved by taking the warrant at its face value
as a courteous letter of recommendation, and letting the
licence to play and the ‘ reward ’ stand as return courtesies
from the corporation to their very good lord. This fiction,
however, can hardly have been applicable to the terms in
which the Master of the Revels may be supposed to have
worded his licence, and still less to those of the royal patents,
which claimed to give direct authority to play ’ within anie
town halls or moute halls or other convenierite places within
the liberties and freedoms of any cittie, vniversitie, towne or
boroughe whatsoever within our realmes and domynions’.
The corporations were not very likely to act upon the
advice attributed to the Lord Coke in 1606 that such licences
from the Crown were ultra vires,^ No doubt they remained
the arbiters as to what places were ‘ conveniente *. They
also prescribed times and seasons, forbidding plays at their

* Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).

* So, too, the Norwich accounts record in 1590 a reward to * the lorde
Shandos players * and * Item more in rewarde to another company of his
men that cam with lycens presently after saying that thos that cam
before were counterfete and not the L. Shandos men '.

* Cf. ch. ix.

aaa9*i

z

338 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

discretion on Sunday ^ or at night,* or in Lent,® or during divine
service,® and laying down for each company the number of
days during which it was at liberty to perform, or the interval
which must elapse between one visit and the next. At
Norwich the number of days ranged from one to eight, some-
times one performance and sometimes two being allowed on
each day. The royal signet warrants which came into use
about i6i6 authorized the companies holding them to stay
fourteen days in any one town. Sometimes Dogberry and
Verges found good reason for refusing leave to play. It was
a season of plague or of social disturbance in the town.® In

» * There shall not any playes ... be played ... on any Sabaothe
dayes nor aboue twoe dales together at any tyme. And no players . . .
to be suffered to playe againe . . . within twentie and eighte dales nexte
after such tyme as they shall haue laste played. . . . And they shall not
exceede the hower of nyne of the clocks in the nighte ’ (Canterbury,
Burghmote Book, 1595) ; ‘ This day lycens ys graunted to the L. of
Huntington his players to playe one daye & not vppon the Saboath daye '
(Norwich, 1597) ; * The Quenes players had leave guiven them to play
for one weeke so that they play neither on the Saboth day nor in the
night nor more then one play a day * (Norwich, 1611).

* * Not . . . after nyne of the clocke ' (Norwich, 1599) ; cf. Canterbury,
above. A Chester order of 1615 fixed 6 p.m. and a Salisbury order of
1623 7 p.m. as the limit ; an Exeter order of 1609 {H, M. C, Exeter MSS,
321) allowed 6 p.m. between Annunciation and Michaelmas and 5 p.m.
between Michaelmas and Annunciation.

* Lord Coke, as Recorder of Coventry, wrote to the Corporation on
28 March 1615 (Murray, ii. 254): ‘Forasmuch as this time is by his
Maiesties lawes and iniunctions consecrated to the service of Almighty
God, and publique notice was given on the last Sabaoth for preparacion
to the receyving of the holy communion. Theis are to will and require
you to suffer no common players whatsoever to play within your Citie
for that it would tend to the hinderance of devotion, and drawing of the
artificers and common people from their labour. And this being signified
vnto any such they will rest therewith (as becometh them) satisfied,
otherwise suffer you Ihem not and this shall be your sufficient warrant.'
The letter is endorsed ‘ The Lord Coke his lettre concerning the La: Eliza:
Players '. The Earl of Cumberland would not let Lord Vaux's men play
in 1609 * because it was Lent & therefor not fitting ' (Murray, ii. 255).

^ Murray, ii. 234 (Chester, 1595). The Privy Council warrant for the
provincial tour of Strange's men in 1593 expressly excludes plays in
service time.

* * The tyme was busy, they dyd not play ' (Bristol, 1541) ; * for that
they should not playe here by reason that the sicknes was then in this
Cytye ' (Canterbury, 1608) ; ‘ for that the tyme was not conveynyent '
(Leicester, 1584) ; * to avoyd the meetynge of people this whote whether
for fear of any infeccon as also for that they came fro an infected place *
(Norwich, 1583). On 6 May 1597 the Privy Council wrote to the Suffolk
Justices to prohibit stage plays during the Whitsun holidays at Hadleigh
(App. D, No. cviii), ‘ doubting what inconveniences may follow thereon,
especially at this t^e of scarcety, when disordred people of the comon
sort wilbe apt to misdemeane themselves '. There had been tumults in
Norfolk during April, owing to the scarcity of grain (Dasent, xxvii. 88). The

339

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY

1603 when the Admiral’s men visited Canterbury, ‘ it was
thought lit they should not play at all in regard that our late
Queen was then ether very sick or dead as they supposed
Or even if the public playing was allowed, the corporation
might be too busy for a Mayor’s play to be appropriate. In
either event the players generally got their fee all the same,
and the Chamberlain, if punctilious, entered it not as a
‘ reward ’ but as a ‘ gratuity ’, and noted in his book that the
company * did not playe Certain indications show them-
selves here and there that the Puritan controversy had spread
to the provinces, and even that the desire to have done with
plays altogether was not wholly confined to London. As
early as 1590 there was a dispute in the corporation of Maldon
between an ex-bailiff of the town and certain colleagues whom
he abused as ‘ a sort of precisians and Brownists ’ because
they forbade a performance on a Sunday evening.* In 1596
the Chester corporation made an order for the suppression of
plays, and fixed a ‘ gratuity ’ of 20s. for the Queen’s men, and
6 ^. 8d. for those of any noble. But it does not seem that the
resolution was persisted in, and in 1615 the city was still
suffering from ‘ the common brute and scandal ’ of * obscene
and unlawfull plaies or tragedies ’, and did no more than bar
them out from the Common Hall and confine them to the
day-time.* At Hull too fines were enacted against citizens
resorting to plays and landlords harbouring them in 1598.*
The players did not always prove conformable to municipal
discipline. Several cases are recorded at Norwich, in which
companies played contrary to orders, and were punished by
committal to prison, or by threats that their lord should be
certified of their contempt, and that they should never more

Privy Council did not, however, often interfere directly with provincial
plays : another example is the letter of 23 June 1592 to the Earl of Derby
(cf. App. D, No. xci), forbidding plays on Sunda3rs and holidays in his
lieutenancy.

* I think there is a clear distinction in municipal accounts between
a * reward ' for pla^g and a * gratuity ' for not playing ; cf. the Norwich
orders in Murray, ii. 339, 341, * beinge demaunded wherefore their comeing
was, sayd they came not to ask leaue to play but to aske the gratuetie
of the Cytty * (1614), * h^ was desired to desist from playing & offered
a benevolence in money which he refused to accept * (1616), * this bouse
offered him a gratuitie to desist ' (1616).

* A. Clark, Shirbum Ballads, 48. He complained that * Before tyme
noble-mens menn hadd such entertaynement when they came to the
towne that the towne hadd the favour of noble-men, but now noble-mens
menn hadd such entertaynement that the towne was brought into con-
tempt with noble-menn *. The players were probably Essex's men, as
their performance on Sunday was contrary to his * lettre '. He was,
however, also High Steward of Maldon.

* Cf. p. 336.

* T. Gent, Hist, of HuU. 128.

340 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

have reward of the city.^ One of the mutinous companies in
1583 was Worcester’s, who in the following year repeated
their offence at Leicester, going * with their drum and trump-
pytts thorowe the towne in contempt of Mr. Mayor * and using
‘ evyll and contemptyous words ’ of that dignitary, who had
given them an angel (35. 4^.) towards their dinner. The
threat of reporting them to their lord reduced them to sub-
mission, and after all they were allowed to play, and made a
public apology to Mr. Mayor as a prologue.

The worst of travelling was that, after all the tramping of
bad roads, and all the wrangling with jacks-in-office, there
was but a scanty living to be made out of it, even with the aid
of the few shillings to be picked up in the larger villages, from
such a windfall as is described in Ratseis or from the

generous hospitality of a friendly manor.® The competition

‘ Murray, ii. 337, ‘ This day John Mufford one of the LA Beauchamps
players being forbidden by M' Maiour to playe within the liberties of this
Citie and in respect thereof gave them among them xx* and yett not-
withstanding they did sett up bills to provoke men to come to their playe
and did playe in XXe churche. Therefore the seid John Mufford is
comytted to prison' (1590); cl. ch. xiii (Worcester's, 1583; Essex's,
1585 ; Derby's, 1602). So, too, at Covent^ in 1600 * the lo: Shandoes
[Ch^dos's] players were comitted to prison for their contempt agaynst
W Maior & ther rema3med untill they made their submisshon under ^eir
hands as appeareth in the fyle of Record and their hands to be seene '.
At Nottingham in 1603 a penalty on the host is recorded in the entry
* Richard Jackson commytted for sufferinge players to sound thyere
trumpetts and playinge in his howse without lycence, and for suffering
his guests to be out all night

• Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 326, reprints from this tract (S. R. 31 Blay 1605)
the chapter ' a pretty Pi^cke passed by Ratsey upon certain Players
that he met by chance in an Inne, who denied their Lord and Maister,
and used another Noblemans name '. Gamaliel Ratsey, highwayman,
harangued the players, like Hamlet, on ' striving to over-doe. and go
beyond yourselves . . . yet your poets take great paines to make your
parts fit for your moulhes, though you gape never so wide ', and on the
ups and downs of the profession, for some * goe home at night with fifteene
pence share apeece ', while others become wealthy. Later he met them
again passing ' like camelions ' under the name of another lord. They
gave a ‘ private play ' before Ratsey, who rewarded them 'with 40s., * with
which they held themselves very richly satisfied, for they scarce had
twentie shillings audience at any time for a play in the countrey '. Next
day he met them with their vragon in the highway, robbed them, bade
them pawn their apparel, ' for as good actors and stalkers as you are
have done it, though now they scome it *, gave them leave to play under
his protection and share with him, and advised their leader to get to
London.

’ Payments to travelling companies appear in the household accounts
of the Earl of Rutland at Belvoir (Rutland MSS,Av, 260), the Earl of
Cumberland at Skipton Castle (Murray, ii. 255), the Duchess of Suffolk
at Grimsthorpe (Ancaster MSS, 459), Sir George Vernon at Haddon Hall
(G. Le B. Smith, Haddon, 121), Lord North at Kirtling (Murray, ii. 295),
the Earl of Derby at Lathom House, New Park, and Knowsley Hall

341

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY

was considerable, for in the provinces the London companies
found rivals in the shape of other companies which rarely or
never came to London at ail, but were none the less substantial
and permanent organizations. Thus Queen Elizabeth’s men
travelled for years between their last London appearance in
1594 and the end of the reign, and continued all the time to
secure the exceptionally high rates of ‘ reward ’ which were
due to the royal name. Other famous provincial companies,
each of which can be traced through a period of years, were
those of the Duchess of Suffolk (1548-63), and the Lords
Mountjoy (1564-78), Stafford (1574-1604), Sheffield (1577-86),
Berkeley (1578-1610), Chandos (1578-1610), Motley (1581-
1602), Darcy (1591-1603), Mounteagle (1593-1616), Huntingdon
(1597-1606), Evers (1600-13), and Dudley (1600-36). Some
of these had a comparatively limited range ; others covered
the whole country. Their presence in the field, and that of
many minor companies, must have made it difficult for the
Londoners.^ The charge of travelling, again, as Strange’s men
complained to the Privy Council about 1592, was intolerable,
and the necessity for dividing the larger companies, so as to
cover more ground, led to disorganization. Pembroke’s men,
when they travelled in 1593, could not save their charges, and
had to pawn their apparel and return home. The years of
plague and travellings were the lean years which sent the
books of plays into the hands of the publishers.* And for
a company to part with the books and garments that formed
its stock in trade was a confession of failure.

The wanderings of English actors were by no means confined
to England itself. They crossed the border to Scotland, where
towards the end of the sixteenth century they incurred the
hostility of the Kirk Sessions, which did not prevent James I
from appointing one or more of them as Court comedians, and
bringing them back with him in 1603 to figure in the lists of
the patented royal companies.® Somewhat later they braved
the Irish Channel, and are found at Youghal.® And on the

(Murray, ii. 296), the Shuttleworths at Smithills and Gawthorpe Hall
(Murray, ii. 393), and Francis Willoughby at WoUaton {Middleton MSS,
421). In A Mad World, my Masters, v. i, 2, characters shamming to be
Lord Owemuch’s players come to Sir Bounteous Progress's, and perform
The Slip, until they are interrupted by a constable.

* Muxray, ii. 19-98, records, in addition to the above, the names of
from fifty to sixty patrons between 1559 and 1616, under whose names
companies are not traceable in London.

* Cf. ch. xxii.

* Cf. ch. xiii (King's, Anne's).

* Grosart, Lismore Papers, 1. xix ; W. J. Lawrence, Was Shakespeare
ever in Ireland ? {Sh,-Jahrbuch, xlii. 65). The earliest notice is of I^ce
Charles's men in Feb. 1616.

342 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

Continent they ranged far and wide.* Notices of them in
France, indeed, are rarer than might be expected, perhaps
because of the barrier of religion, perhaps because the Italians
had already occupied the ground, perhaps only because the
archives have not been thoroughly searched. To Italy and
to Spain they just penetrated. In northern Europe, on the
other hand, in the Netherlands, in Germany, even in Denmark,
Sweden, and Poland, they found a constant welcome, until
their movements were checked by the outbreak of the Thirty
Years’ War in 1620. A pioneer company, which made its way
from Leicester’s head-quarters at Utrecht to the Courts of
Copenhagen and Dresden in 1586, included members who
afterwards became fellows of Shakespeare as Lord Chamber-
lain’s men. The shifting relations of the numerous bands
which followed them are beyond research, but the initiative
in organizing the raids seems to have been largely taken by
two men. One of these was Robert Browne, who paid not
less than five visits abroad between 1590 and 1620, and
appears to have had many associates, of whom the most
important was John Green. The other was John Spencer, who
first appears in 1604, and whose operations were probably
quite independent of Browne’s. The industry of German
scholars has made it possible to trace in outline the stories
of Spencer and of a group of companies owing their origin
more or less directly to Browne. Their adventures were
clearly much facilitated by the existence of numerous petty
German courts, under cultivated rulers who were glad to take
a troop of actors into their service for a year or two at a time,
and then let them go for a while on their travels from one to
another of the great towns. Conspicuous amongst such
patrons were the Electors Joachim Frederick (1598-1608)
and John Sigismund (1608-91) of Brandenburg, the Electors
Christian I (1586-91), Christian II (1591-1611), and John
George (1611-56) of Saxony, Henry Julius (1589-1613) Duke
of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, and Maurice (1592-1627) Land-
grave of Hesse-Cassel. Naturally, also, the actors made their
way to Heidelberg, whither the Elector Palatine Frederick V
brought his English bride in 1613. These were Protestant
princes, but Catholic Germany, although less often visited,
was not closed to the English, who found particular favour
with the house of the Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, after-
wards the Emperor Ferdinand II. Of the great cities of
Germany the most hospitable to actors, so far as our knowledge
goes, were Cologne, Strassburg, Ulm, Augsburg, Nuremberg,

• C£. ch. xiv.

343

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY

and above all Frankfort, where the two great marts or fairs
held annually at Easter and in the autumn served as a rallying-
point for travellers and entertainers of every species. The
early successes of the English in Germany are reported by
Fynes Moryson, who was at Frankfort for the autumn fair
of 1592 :

* Germany hath some fewe wandring Comeydians, more deseruing
pitty then prayse, for the serious parts are dully penned, and worse
acted, and the mirth they make is ridiculous, and nothing lesse then
witty (as I formerly haue shewed). So as I remember that when some
of our cast dispised stage players came out of England into Germany,
and played at Franckford in the tyme of the Mart, hauing nether
a complete number of Actours, nor any good Apparell, nor any
ornament of the Stage, yet the Germans, not vnderstanding a worde
they sayde, both men and women, flocked wonderfully to see theire
gesture and Action, rather then heare them, speaking English which
they vnderstoode not, and pronowncing peaces and patches of English
playes, which my selfe and some English men there present could
not heare without great wearysomenes. Yea my selfe comming from
Franckford in the company of some cheefe marchants Dutch and
Flemish, heard them often bragg of the good markett they had made,
only condoling that they had not the leasure to heare the English
players.’

In the Netherlands the English players, according to
Moryson, brought themselves into a singular difficulty. Here,
too, was no native stage :

' For Commedians, they litle practise that Arte, and are the poorest
Actours that can be imagined, as my selfe did see when the Citty of
Getrudenberg being taken by them from the Spanyards, they made
bonsfyers and pubUkely at Leyden represented that action in a play,
so rudely as the poore Artizans of England would haue both penn^
and acted it much better. So as at the same tyme when some cast
players of England came into those partes, the people not vnderstanding
what they sayd, only for theere action followed them with wonderfull
concourse, yea many young virgines fell in loue with some of the
players, and followed them from citty to citty, till the magistrates
were forced to forbid them to play any more.’ ^

Moryson’s account finds confirmation in the praise lavished
upon English acting by German writers, such as Erhard Cellius
in 1605, Joannes Rhenanus about 1610, and Daniel von Wensin
in 1613.^ Undoubtedly the German stage, which had been

‘ C. Hughes, Shakespeare^s Europe, 304, 373. Moryson again refers to
the vogue abroad of * stragling broken companyes ' from England in bis
account of the London theatre ; cf. ch. xvi, introduction.

• E. Cellius, Eques Auratus Anglo-Wirtembergicus (1605), 329 * Profert
enim multos et praestantes Anglia musicos, comoedos, tragoedos, histrio*
nicae peritissimos, e quibus interdum aliquot consociati sedibus suis ad

344 the control OF THE STAGE

slow to develop on professional lines, owed a great impetus to
the invasions. Germans attached themselves to the English
companies, and in course of time imitated the English methods
in companies of their own. The English plays served as models
for German dramatists, of whom Duke Henry Julius of Bruns-
wick and Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg were the best known.^
On the other hand, the invaders themselves became denizened,
at any rate to the extent of learning to give their performances
in the German tongue. Moryson found Browne’s company
handicapped by their use of English at Frankfort in 1592.
A Munster chronicler tells us that an anonymous company
which visited his town in 1601 still played ‘ in ihrer engelschen
Sprache ’, but that between the acts the clown amused the
audience with ‘ b 5 tze und geckerie * in German.^ In 1603
actors who petition for leave to appear at the Frankfort fair
advertise their intention to give their comedies and tragedies
‘ in hochteutscher sprache ’, and there can be little doubt
that, whatever may have been the caise in Anglomaniac courts,
theirs was the practice which ultimately prevailed in the
cities.^ Such portions of the repertories of the English
actors as have been preserved are without exception in
German. They are of singularly little literary value, fully
bearing out Moryson’s description of them as no more than
’ peeces and patches ’ of English plays. But occasionally one
of them possesses a critical interest as representing a play now
lost or some earlier version of its model than that extant

tempus relictis ad exteras nationes excurrere, artemque suam illis prae-
sertim Principum aulis demonstrare ostentareque consuevenint. Paucis
ab hinc annis in Germaniam nostram Anglicani musici dictum ob finem
expaciati, et in magnonim Pnncipum aulis aliquandiu versati, tantum ex
arte musica, histrionicaque sibi favorem conciliarunt, ut largiter remu-
nerati domum inde auro et argento onusti sunt reversi ' ; Johannes
Rhenanus, in dedication of Streit der Sinne (a translation of the English
play of Lingua) to Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, * . . . die Engl&ndischen Comoe-
dianten (ich rede von geubten) anderen vorgehn und den Vorzug haben * ;
Daniel von Wensin, Oraito contra Britanniam, in Fr. Achillis Ducis Wurtem-
berg, Consvdiaixo de pnncipatu inter provincias Europae habita Tubingae
in illustri collegto (1613), * Nec diu est cum plerique artifices in Anglia
peregrini et exteri et aunfabri Londini pene omnes fuerunt German i :
Anghs interea gulae voluptatibus . . . et rebus nihili, atque adeo histrioniae
iugiter operam dantibus ; in qua sic profecerunt, ut iam apud nos Angli
histriones omnium maxime delectent \

‘ Another example is loannes Valentinus Andreae, who writes in his
Vita (ed. 1849), 10 * lam a secundo et tertio post miUesimum sexcentesi-
mum coeperam aliquid exercendi ingenii ergo pangere, cuius facile prima
fuere Esther et Hyacinthus comoediae ad aemulationem Anglicorum
histrionum iuvenili ausu factae

* M. Rdchell, Chrontk, in Die Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Monster,
in. 174.

^ E. Mentzel, Geschichte der Schauspielkun^t in Frankfurt, 52.

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 345

in an English text. In addition to actual plays, enough lists
of performances are upon record to give a fair notion of the,
range of the travelling repertories. Both recent productions
of the London stage and more old-fashioned pieces were drawn
upon for adaptation. The choice was doubtless determined
by the availability of prompter’s copies or printed texts, as
the case might be, when a company was collecting a stock-in-
trade for its adventure. Sometimes variety was obtained by
using the experiments of a German dramatist, or one of
those scriptural comedies, Susanna and the Elders^ The Prodi-
gal Son^ Dives and Lazarus^ which had been the delight of the
German, even more than the English, Renaissance.

The most obvious thing about the life of the English actor
on the road in Germany is that it was uncommonly like his
life on the road in England. Perhaps this is hardly surprising
when it is borne in mind that, as already pointed out, the
player away from his permanent theatre reverted to the status
of the minstrel, and that throughout the ages the minstrel had
been cosmopolitan. That in a land of alien speech, even more
than at home, the strict arts of comedy and tragedy had to be
eked out with music and buffoonery and acrobatics goes
without saying. Even as late as 1614 and at the court of
Berlin the terms on which actors were engaged bound them
to render service * mit Springen, Spielen und anderer Kurz-
weil *, as their lord might require.^ Away from court, in
Germany as in England, they were mainly dependent upon
the goodwill of the civic magistrates, to whom on approaching
each town they addressed elaborate petitions, of which many
are preserved, in which they recited their own merits, and
made play with the names of any princes whose servants they
were entitled to call themselves, or whose recommendation
some successful display had enabled them to gain. There was
always the chance that, on the strength of plague or some other
pretext, they might be refused admission altogether. At the
best, they must expect to have the length of their stay, the
days and hours of their performances, the sums they might
charge for standing-room and seats, most thoughtfully and
minutely regulated for them. And when all the preliminaries
were gone through, and the Rathaus or an inn-yard put at
their disposal, and the creaking boards set up, and the tattered
frippery extracted from the hamper, it might perhaps after all,
as at Brunswick in 1614, be a case of ‘ kein Volk * and the
Council might give them a thaler out of charity and send them
on their way.* In Germany too, as in England, they had to

* Cohn, Ixxxviii.

* A. Glaser. Geschichte des Theaters in Braunschweig, 1 3.

346 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

make their account with the wise, to whom their performances
yrere folly, and the ‘ unco* guid to whom they were an
offence.^ Evidently they were not always discreet in their
choice of themes. At Elbing in 1605 a company received a
g^ratihcation of twenty thalers for a performance before the
Council ; and^the record continues, . . daneben aber auch
ihnen zu untersagen, dass sie nunmehr zu agiren aufhttren
sollen in Anmerkung, dass sie gestern in der ComOdie schand-
bare Sachen fUrgebracht.^ Even princes sometimes got into
trouble by encouraging these foreigners of doubtful respecta-
bility. There was glee in Cassel when Landgrave Maurice
decided to disband the ‘ verfluchten ’ English in 1602.
Possibly in this case it was the taxpayer rather than the
Puritan who felt relief ; but when the Duke of Pommern-
Wolgast and his mother allowed the Schlosskiiche at L6tz to
be used for a performance in 1606 they brought upon them-
selves a shower of letters from Hofprediger Gregorius Hagius,
which precisely re-echo the familiar English diatribes of
Stephen Gosson and John Rainolds.® Presumably the whole
business paid its way, or Browne would not have gone over
four or five times or Spencer spent fifteen years in the country.
A recent investigator, who has made a far more elaborate
analysis of all the financial material than I have room for,
calculates that, what with court salaries, and what with
admission fees to public performances at the rate of about
three kreuzers or less than a penny a head, an actor might
hope to make on the average about £60 a year.^ This was
enough to live upon, even if, as was sometimes the case, wife
and children accompanied the expedition. It seemed attrac-
tive enough to poor Richard Jones, who was making at home
‘ some tymes a shillinge a day and some tymes nothinge *.
But it hardly bears out the statement of Erhard Cellius that
the English returned home ‘ auro et argento onusti *. And
in fact those who essayed a career in Germany were the
failures of London. ‘ Some of our cast dispised stage players
Moryson calls them, and many years later, in 1625, the same
tale is told by the words put into the mouths of actors in

* Archiv filr Litteraiur-Geschichte, xv. 212, from diary of Martin Crusius
at Tubingen in 1597: * £s sind wol x Comoediai^ten hie gewesen : qui
5 aut 6 dies comoe^as egerunt in domo fnimentaria. Dicuntur Angli
esse et miri artifices. Sunt illi quibus Dux noster 300 fl. donasse dicitur.
Ego non spectaui. Quid ad hominem ista septuagenario maiorem ?
fuerunt ilia dramata amatoria. Hodie Susannam egerunt. Ego sum
scriptoribus Homericis occupatus.*

* Cohn, Ixxx.

® C. F. Meyer in Sh.- Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 200.

* C. Harris ia M. L. A. xxii. 446*

THE ACTOR’S QUALITY 347

The Run-away's Answer : ‘ We can be bankrupts pn this side
and gentlemen of a company beyond the sea : we burst at
London, and are pieced up at Rotterdam.’ * There were,
indeed, those who made their fortunes abroad, but they were
those who, like Thomas Sackville, forsook the stage and
devoted their energies to an honest trade.

^ Cohn, xcvi.

XI

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

[BibHographical Note. — The material for this chapter is maiuly to be
found in B^k III (Companies) and Book IV (Theatres) and the works
there cited. My account of Henslowe is practically all based on W. W.
Greg, Henslowe’s Diary (1904-8) and Henslowe Papers (1907). W. Rendle
made a useful contribution in Philip Henslowe (Genealogist, n. s. iv). Since
I completed this chapter, useful studies in theatrical finance have been
contributed by A. Thaler, Shakespeare’s Income (1918, 5 . P. xv. 82),
Playwright’s Benefits and Interior Gathering in the Elisdbethan Theatre
(1919, S. P. xvi. 187), The Elizabethan Dramatic Companies (1920, M, L. R.
XXXV. 123).]

Withal the actors, or the more discreet of them, prospered.
This fact peeps out from the diatribes of their critics, and is
indeed part of the case against them. The theatres are
thronged, while the churches are empty. The drones suck
the honey stored up by London’s laborious citizens. Already,
in 1578, John Stockwood estimates the aggregate gain of
eight play-houses, open but once in the week, at £2,000 by
the year. The players began to ruffle it, in garments fit only
for their betters. ‘ The very hyrelings ’, says Gosson in 1579,
‘ which stand at reuersion of vi’ by the weeke, iet under
gentlemen’s noses in sutes of silke, exercising themselues too
prating on the stage, and common scofling when they come
abrode, where they looke askance ouer the shoulder at euery
man, of whom the Sunday before they begged an almes ’ ;
and in like vein Walsingham’s correspondent of 1587 bewails
to him the ‘ wofull sight to see two hundred proude players
jett in their silkes, wheare five hundred pore people sterve
in the streets ’. It is, however, possible to lay undue stress
upon the public finery as an evidence of prosperity, for this
was apt to be borrowed from the tiring-house wardrobe,
and in time it was found that the advertisement earned
hardly justified the detriment to the common stock of
apparel. The articles signed by those joining the Lady
Elizabeth’s men about 1614 bound them amongst other things
not to go out of the theatre with any of the apparel on their
bodies. The surest economic sign of a growing industry is the
capacity to spend money on building, and it was a true
instinct that led Stockwood to discommend the gorgeous
playing-places erected at * great charges ’ in the fields, and

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

349

William Harrison to note it as ‘ an evident token of a wicked
time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build suche
houses *. And when Robert Greene wanted to paint a picture
of a typical successful actor in 1592, he made him describe
himself as one who had once travelled on foot and carried
his properties on his back, but now his very share in playing
apparel would not be sold for £200, and he was reputed by
his neighbours able ‘ at his proper cost to build a windmill
James Burbadge was ‘ the first builder of playhowses *, and
thereby laid the foundations of the prosperity of his family.
He had been a joiner, before he became a player, and perhaps
this suggested the enterprise of the Theatre, which he put
up in 1576 upon, borrowed capital. When his son Richard
died in 1619 he was reckoned worth £300 a year in land.
Even more fortunate was Edward Alleyn, who was in a posi-
tion to retire from the stage before he was forty, to purchase
the manor of Dulwich for £10,000, to build the College of
God’s Gift, and thereafter to spend upon the maintenance
of his household and his foundation at the rate of some
£1,700 a year. Other actors, mainly of the King’s company,
can be shown to have made their more modest piles. Thomas
Pope, Augustine Phillips, Henry Condell, all appear from
their wills to have been substantial men when they died.
John Heminge is described in 1614 as ‘ of greate lyveinge
wealth and power ’. The Restoration story that Shakespeare
spent £1,000 a year at Stratford is probably apocryphal,
in view of the fact that his known investments only amount
to a little over £1,000 ; but at least he returned as a moneyed
man to the scene of his father’s bankruptcy, and enjoyed
consideration as the owner of the best house in his native
town. Aubrey’s statement that he left property worth about
£200 or £300 a year, which gives him a fortune about equal
to Richard Burba dge’s, seems not unreasonable.* Like true
Englishmen, the successful players sought after less material
proof of their worth than was afforded by their lands and
houses. Alleyn, having long been lord of a manor, and having
connected himself by marriage with the Dean of St. Paul’s,
was desirous in 16^4 of ‘ sum further dignetie ’, probably
a knighthood. Others were content with acquiring or

* App. C, No. xlviii.

■ C. Severn, Diary of John Ward (c, 1661-3), 183, * I have heard that
M'. Shakespeare ... in his elder days lived at Stratford : and supplied
the stage with 2 plays every year, and for itt had an allowance so large,
^t hee spent att the rate of a x,ooof a year, as I have heard * ; Aubrey,
ii. 226, ' I thinke I have been told that he left 2 or 300 /i per annum there
and thereabout [i.e. at Stratford] to a sister *.

350 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

assuming a claim to armorial bearings, which would entitle
them to rank as * gentlemen Shakespeare in 1596 obtained
a confirmation of a grant of arms made to his father as
bailiff of Stratford nearly thirty years before ; and in 1599
sought additional authority to impale the coat of his mother’s
family, the Ardens.^ Heminges obtained a confirmation of
arms in 1629. Such grants did not go altogether unstrictured
by heraldic purists, and the cases of Shakespeare and of his
fellow Richard Cowley formed part of the material for a charge
of making grants to ‘ base and ignoble persons ’ brought by
a rival against the responsible king-of-arms. Augustine
Phillips and Thomas Pope did not trouble the heralds, but
went to an heraldic painter, and bought, the one the arms of
Sir William Phillips, Lord Bardolph, and the other those of
Sir Thomas Pope, Chancellor of the Augmentations.* These
ambitions of the players, no less than their investments,
yielded stuff both for moralizing and for satire. Henry Crosse,
in his Vertues Common-wealth (1603), rebukes the pride of the
‘ copper-lace gentlemen ’ who ‘ purchase lands by adulterous
playes ’.* And in the tract of Ratseis Ghost (1605), already
cited, Gamaliel Ratsey speaks of those ‘ whom Fortune hath
so well favored that, what by penny-sparing and long practise
of playing, are grownc so wealthy that they have expected to
be knighted, or at least to be conjunct in authority and to
sit with men of great worship on the bench of justice ’ ; and
he advises the country player, with whom he has fallen in,
to get him to London, ‘ and when thou feelest thy purse well
lined, buy thee some place or lordship in the country, that,
growing weary of playing, thy mony may there bring thee to
dignitie and reputation ’. The player too heard ‘ of some that
have gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to
be exceeding wealthy ’. Ratsey then knights- him ‘ Sir
Simon Two Shares and a Halfe ’, and tells him he is ‘ the first
knight that ever was player in England

Certainly all players did not grow rich, even in London.

* Lee, 281 ; G. R. French Shakespeareana Geneatogica, 514 ; Herald
and Genealogist, i. 492.

* Lee, 285. citing (a) manuscript notes by Ralph Brooke on William
Dettiick*s grants of arms, in which both Shakespeare and Cowley appear
in a list of persons given arms on false pretences, and (b) a manuscript
Discourse of the Causes of Discord amongst the Officers of Arms by William
Smith, Rougedragon, * Phillipps the player had graven in a gold ring the
armes of W® Phillipp, Lord Bardolph, with the said L. Bardolphs cote
quartred, which I shewed to M' York [Brooke, York Herald] at a small
gravers shopp in Foster Lane. . . . Pope the player would have no other
armes but the armes of S' Tho. Pope, Chancelor of y« Augmentations

* App: C, No. liv.

* Hailiwell-Phillipps, i. 325 ; cf. ch. x.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 351

Some of them to the end, perhaps the majority, remained
threadbare companions enough ; in and out of debt, spongers
upon their fellows, frequenters of pawnshops, acquainted with
prison. Partly it was a matter of character. Those who had
to do with the stage were not all such riff-raff as a hasty
reading of the Puritan literature might suggest. Gosson,
indeed, admits as much, allowing that some among those
professing ‘ the qualitie ’ are ‘ sober, discreete, properly
learned honest housholders and citizens well thought on
amonge their neighbours at home * ; while on his side Thomas
Heywood is quick to maintain the harm wrought by the
licentious to a calling in which many are ‘ of substance, of
government, of sober lives and temperate carriages, house-
keepers and contributory to all duties enjoyned them ’, and
to plead that if there be a few of degenerate demeanour, his
readers will not ‘ censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of
some Doubtless there is a certain instability of tempera-
ment, which the life of the theatre, with its ups and downs
of fortune, its unreal sentiments and its artificially stimulated
emotions, is well calculated to encourage ; and we may
perhaps find the victims of such a temperament in certain
actors who, although clearly of standing in their profession,
seem to have been constantly shifting from company to
company, without attaining any secure position or, as one
may conjecture, reaping any substantial harvest from their
labour and their skill. One of these was Richard Jones,
originally a fellow of Alleyn with Lord Worcester’s men,
presently selling to Alleyn his share of clothes and books,
at one time reduced to 15. a day or nothing, at another setting
out to tour the Continent with Robert Browne, then back
again with Alleyn amongst the Admiral’s men, then trans-
ferring himself to the Swan and returning a few months later
to the Rose, and finally allowing himself to be bought out
for £50 and passing into obscurity. Another was Martin
Slater, also at one time one of the Admiral’s men, whom
he left and went to law with, then a wanderer with Laurence
Fletcher in Scotland, and afterwards successively traceable
with Lord Hertford’s men, with Queen Anne’s, as a member
of the King’s Revels syndicate, and with Queen Anne’s
again as manager of one of the provincial companies travelling
under the Queen’s warrant. Perhaps it is merely another
way of stating the same issue to say that the financial
success of a player depended on his obtaining an interest, not
merely in the day-to-day profits of a company, but also in the

^ App. C, Nos. xxii, Ivii ; cf. Wright (App. I, ii) on the * grave and
sober behaviour ' of the later King's men.

352 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

permanent investment represented by a theatre. This becomes
.readily apparent upon an analysis of the business methods
employed in the organization of the dramatic industry.
The basis of this organization was the banding together of
players into associations or partnerships, the members
of which acted together, held a common stock of garments
and play-books, incurred joint expenditure, and daily or at
other convenient periods divided up the profits of their enter-
prise. In a legal document an associate of such a company
is described as ‘ a full adventurer, storer and sharer among
them * ; ^ the term in ordinary use was ‘ sharer *. No doubt
the sharing arrangement was in origin traditional ; it is
described in 1614 as ‘accordinge to the custome of players’.^
But it became convenient to formulate it in a legal agreement
or ‘ composition *, which provided for the co-operation of
the sharers and defined their relations to each other. Thus
the composition of the Duke of York’s men in 1610 bound
them to play together for three years, and deprived a member
who left without the consent of his fellows of any interest
in the common stock. Under that of Queen Anne’s men
about 1612 a retiring sharer was entitled to a payment
at the rate of £80 for a full share. Such provisions, which
were intended to obviate the breaking up of a stock, and of
themselves indicate a substantial investment of capital, seem
to have been usual. Alleyn had £50 on leaving the Admiral’s
men in 1597, Jones and Shaw £50 in 1602 ; under the com-
position of the same company, then the Prince’s men, in 1613,
a sharer retiring with consent was entitled to £70. Both
the Queen’s and the Prince’s men made a similar allowance
to the widow of a sharer. Each of the sharers signed a bond
for the observance of the composition, which also covered
certain disciplinary regulations imposed by the company
on its members. Thus the articles signed by Robert Dawes,
on joining the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1614, not only made
him a partaker in the contractual and financial liabilities
of the company, but also exposed him to penalties if he missed
plays or rehearsals, or came late or in a state of intoxication,
or took apparel or other common property away from the
theatre. As the compositions grew more detailed and the
enterprises more important, it proved convenient that
one of the sharers should be appointed, formally or informally,
to act as trustee and manager for the rest, to receive and
make payments, to hold the composition, bonds, licences,
and other legal papers, and generally to look after the business

* Cf. ch. xiii (Anne's).

* Cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elisabeth's).

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

353

interests of his fellows. Thus it is pleaded in a lawsuit con-
cerning Queen Anne’s men that Thomas Greene was ‘ one
of the principall and cheif persons of the said companie
and did ‘ laie out or disburse ’ moneys on their behalf ; and
that, after his death in 1612, the company ‘ did put the
managing of thier whole businesses and affaires belonging
vnto them ioyntly as they were players in trust ’ unto
Christopher Beeston, by whom they were ‘ altogether ruled *.
John Heminge seems to have acted in a similar capacity
for the King’s men, and to have had the custody of their
deeds. He regularly appears as their payee at Court, and it
is probable that he gave up acting in order to devote himself
to business management. The members of a company did
not invariably share and share alike. It is possible that in
some cases the manager or a leading actor had a preponderant
interest.^ Tucca, in The Poetaster^ at the end of his interview
with Histrio, bids him commend him to ‘ Seven Shares and
a Half *. So, too, Gamaliel Ratsey knights his player as
‘ Sir Simon Two Shares and a Halfe Perhaps this is only
the chaff of the satirists. In any case one hopes that there
is no foundation for the further suggestion of Tucca, when
he offers to take the players into his service, and ‘ ha’ two
shares for my countenance ’.2 We know what Ratsey’s
corresponding threat to ‘ share with thee againe for playing
under my warrant ’ means, for Ratsey was a highwayman,
and levied his share not by ‘ composition *, but at the end
of a pistol. An actual example of a privileged share is that
held by Alleyn in the Admiral’s company about 1600, which

‘ Dekker and Webster, Northward Ho / iv. i. i :

* Bellamoni. Sirrah, I'll speak with none.

Servant, What ? Not a player ?

Bellamoni, No ; though a sharer bawl.

I'll speak with none, although it be the mouth
Of the big company.’

Cf. Dekker, News from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 99), * Marrie players swarme
there as they do here, whose occupation being smelt out, by the Caco-
daemon, or head officer of the Countrie, to bee lucrative, he purposes to
make vp a company, and to be chiefe sharer himselfe ' ; also A Mad World,
my Masters, v. i. 42, where one of the sham Lord Owemuch's players is
a ' politician ', who * works out restraints, makes best legs at court, and
has a suit made of purpose for the company's business ' and * has greatest
share and may live of himselfe '.

* Jonson, Poetaster, in. iv. 373, * Commend me to seuen-shares and
a halfe, and remember to morrow — if you lacke a seruice, you shall play
in my name, rascalls, but you shall buy your owne cloth, and Tie ha'
two shares for my countenance It appears from a list of Sir Henry
Herbert's profits as Master of the Revels, drawn up in 1662, that he had
secured a share, which he valued at £100 a year, from each of the London
companies, other than the King's meh {Vanorum, lii. 266).

A a

2229*1

354 the control OF THE STAGE

seems to have been free of any liability to contribute towards
the upkeep of the stock or other current expenses.^ The
shares were often subdivided, so that some members of the
company were full sharers, others half sharers or three-
quarter sharers.2 The number of shares varied ; an ordinary
London company may be taken to have consisted of about
ten or twelve sharers.® For travelling purposes it is probable
that separate compositions were entered into, except perhaps
for short summer tours, and that the numbers were smaller.^
It should be made clear that the companies of players,
although based upon the bodies of royal or noble servants
constituted under patents or other warrants of appointment,
were not precisely identical with these. Each company had
to get the authority of such a warrant, before it was licensed
to act at all, but the legal bond of association between
its members was not the warrant, but the composition. As
a rule the terms of the patents give or imply a power to those
named in them to associate themselves with others. New
members could doubtless be sworn into the service of the
lord without any need for a fresh patent. But it cannot be
held that every fellow sharer was necessarily a servant of the
same lord, and still less that every servant named in a warrant
was necessarily a sharer of any particular company acting
under that warrant. Thus there is no proof that Laurence
Fletcher, who is named first amongst the King’s servants of
1603, ever acted with the King’s men. Similarly Martin

' It is impossible to say what arrangement underlies the statement in
an undated letter from mchard Jones to Alleyn about a German tour
(Henslowe Papers, 33) that Robert Biowne was * put to half a shaer. and
to stay hear, for they ar all against his goinge \

* Hamlet, in. ii. 286 :

* Hamlet, Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers — if the rest of
my fortunes turn Turk with me — with two Provincial loses on my razed
shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players.

Horatio. Half a share.

Hamlet. A whole one, I.*

For half-sharers, cf. ch. xiii (Queen’s, Admiral's). Three-quarter sharers
existed in the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1614 ; cf. T. M., Father
Hubburd's Tales (Bullen, Middleton, viii. 64), ‘ The ant began to stalk
like a three-quarter sharer ’.

3 The number of playeis named in the Jacobean patents varies from
7 to 14, but this gives little diiect guidance as to the number of sharers.
It is, however, consistent with my estimate, which is based mainly upon
the number of Admiral's men shown at various times in contractual
relations with Henslowe. There were 12 sharers in the Lady Elizabeth's
company in 1611 and 12 in Queen Anne's company in 1617. Probably
the Elizabethan companies ran rather smaller.

* Dekker, News from Hell (1606), ‘ a companie of country players, being
nine in number, one sharer and the rest jomymen ' ; cf. p. 362.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 355

Slater and certain other Queen’s servants and Gilbert Reason,
a Prince’s servant, did not, during long periods, act with the .
corresponding London companies, but toured the provinces
with companies of their own, taking out for this purpose
duplicates or exemplifications of the patents, a practice
which came to be regarded by the authorities as an abuse,^
On the other hand, the servants of two lords sometimes played
as a single company.^ Thus Lord Oxford’s men and Lord
Worcester’s were ‘ ioyned by agrement togeather in on
companie ’ at the Boar’s Head during 1602. Similarly Lord
Hunsdon’s men and Lord Howard’s came as a single com-
pany to Court in 1586 ; the Queen’s men and Lord Sussex’s
were ‘ togeather * at the Rose in 1594, while Rosseter’s patent
for the Porter’s Hall theatre in 1615 contemplates its use by
no less than three companies, the Lady Elizabeth’s, the
Prince’s, and the Queen’s Revels, probably as a united body.
Or the servant of one lord might attach himself as an individual
to the company passing under the name of another. Thus
Alleyn was still an Admiral’s man when he toured with
Lord Strange’s men in 1593, possibly as the last representative
of a more complete combination between two companies.
Similarly Robert Pallant remained a Queen’s man while
playing successively with the Lady Elizabeth’s and the
Duke of York’s in 1614-16, and William Rowley appeared in
the Prince’s livery at King James’s funeral in 1625, although
he had probably joined the King’s men some two years before.^

The sharers did not, however, take the whole risk of a
theatrical enterprise ; the owner or owners of the play-house
stood in with them. This arrangement certainly goes back
to the days of the elder Burbadge, ‘ the first builder of play-
houses *. I do not know whether it had also prevailed in
the London inn-yards. Instead of paying a fixed rent for
the building placed at their disposal, the sharers assigned to
the owner a fixed part of the takings at each performance.
Originally Burbadge had the whole of the payments made at

‘ Cf. ch. ix.

2 Amalgamated companies also toured the provinces, and even entered
into partnership with companies, such as Lord Morley's, which were purely
provincial. Thus we find Hunsdon's and Morley's at Bristol in 1583, and
Hunsdon's and Howard’s at Leicester in 1585 ; the Queen’s and Sussex’s
at Southampton, Gloucester, and Coventry in 15 90-1 ; the Queen’s and
Morley’s at Aldeburgh on ii Oct. 1592 (Stopes, Hunnis, 314) ; the
Admiral’s, Strange’s (or Derby’s), and Morley’s variously combined at
Ipswich, ^uthampton, Bath, Shrewsbury, York, and Newcastle in 1 592-4.
^metimes players worked with musicians, tumblers or rope-dancers ; of
course this was so in London itself, but naturally the old methods of the
mimes tended to reassert themselves more markedly in the provinces.

* Murray, 1. 172 (table), 237.

356 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

the entrances to the galleries ; his successors contented them-
selves with half these payments, together with, at the Globe,
half those made at the tiring-house door. The other half,
and the full payments at all other outer doors went to the
sharers. The owner was apparently allowed to safeguard
his interests by appointing the ‘ gatherers ’ or money-takers
for the galleries.^ When the Globe was opened in 1599 the
Burbadges of the second generation hit upon the device of
binding the interests of some of the leading actors more
closely to their own by giving them a share in these profits
of the ‘ house *. To this end the site was conveyed by lease
in two distinct moieties. One the Burbadges held ; the other
was divided amongst five of the actors. Subsequently it was
several times redivided into a varying number of fractions,
according as one man dropped out, or it was desired to
admit another to participate in the benefits. The tenures
of the fractions, while such as to secure joint control, did not
prevent the alienation of the profits attached to them. This
gave rise to some trouble, owing to the remarriage of widows
with persons who were not members of the company at all.
Incidentally it enabled John Heminge and Henry Condell,
who had business capacity, to buy up by degrees the whole
moiety. There was a rent payable to the ground landlord,
and to this each holder of a fraction made a proportionate
contribution. A levy was also called when the Globe had to
be rebuilt after a fire in 1613, The Burbadges claimed to have

* Henslowe’s agreement with John Cholmley, probably for the Rose,
in 1587, provides for joint appointment by the parties as landlords. The
same arrangement is implied, so far as the galleries are concerned, by the
Lady Elizabeth’s agreement of 1614. In 1612 Robert Browne wrote to
Alleyn to procure ‘ a gathering place ’ for the wife of one Rose, a hireling
of Prince Henry’s men. Apparently the sharers had to pay the gatherers'
wages. An undated letter from William Bird, also of Prince Henry’s men,
to Alleyn tells him of the dishonesty of John Russell, ‘ that by yowr
apoyntment was made a gatherer with us ’. The company will not let
him 'take the box ’, but will pay his wages as * a nessessary atendaunt
on the stage ’, and if he likes, employ him also as a tailor. Henslowe
made the Lady Elizabeth’s pay for nine gatherers more than he was
entitled to. In Frederick and Bastlea, the gatherers came on as supers
{Henslowe Papers, 3, 24, 63, 85, 89, 137). The ‘ place or priviledge ’ in
the Globe and Blackfiiars left by Henry Condell to Elizabeth Wheaton
in 1627 was presumably that of a gatherer. A satirist wrote in The Actors
Remonstrance of 1643 (Hazlitt, E. D, S. 263), ‘Our very doore-keepers
men and women most gnevously complaine that by this cessation they
are robbed of the privilege of stealing from us with licence : they cannot
now, as in King Agamemnon’s dayes, seeme to scratch their heads where
they itch not, and drop shillings and half croune-pieces in at their collars ’.
The money taken at the door or in the gallery was traditionally put in
a box and kept for division ; cf. Rankins, Mxrrour of Monsters (1587), f. 6,

‘ door-keepers and box-holders at plays ’.

THE ACTOR^S ECONOMICS

357

been at the cost of the original building and to have raised
a loan for the purpose. We know that they pulled down the
Theatre and carried the materials across the water. The
lease of the Globe formed a precedent for a somewhat similar
transaction when the King’s men took over responsibility
for the Blackfriars in 1608. In this case the freehold belonged
to Richard Burbadge, who leased out the play-house in sevenths,
keeping one fraction himself, and allotting the rest to his
brother, to the representative of a former tenant, and to
four of the players. At some later date the interest was
divided into eighths instead of sevenths. It is to be noted
that it was only certain selected men who thus acquired
rights in the profits of the houses, and one of the effects of
the policy adopted was to set up a distinction amongst the
members of the association itself, of whom some were both
‘ housekeepers ’, as they came to be called, and ordinary
sharers, while others were ordinary sharers alone. At the
Blackfriars from the beginning, and at the Globe as rights under
the leases were alienated, there were also housekeepers who
were not sharers at all, and might even be members of rival
companies. A dispute arising from these anomalies throws
light upon the responsibilities undertaken and the advantages
enjoyed by housekeepers and sharers respectively. It is of
late date, but there is no reason to think that the conditions
revealed were substantially different from those of earlier
years. About 1630 all the rights in both houses were held,
mainly through deaths and alienations, by persons who were
not actors. Shortly afterwards two or three of the leading
members of the company were allowed to acquire interests,
and in 1635 three other sharers brought the state of things
before the notice of the Lord Chamberlain, who exercised
some equitable control over the affairs of the company as
a part of the royal Household, and petitioned that they too
might be admitted to the same privilege of purchasing frac-
tions of the leases ‘ at the usuall and accustomed rates ’.
The pleadings and the orders of the Lord Chamberlain form
the record known as the Sharers Papers,^ From them it
emerges that the housekeepers were entitled to receive a full
moiety, ‘ without any defalcation or abatement at all ’ of
all takings from the galleries and boxes in both houses
and from the tiring-house door of the Globe. The sharers
had the other moiety, together with the takings at the outer
doors. If a man was a sharer as well as a housekeeper,
he claimed under boj:h heads. The outgoings were also

‘ Cf. ch. xvi (Globe) and ch. xvii (Blackfriars) ; the document is printed
in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312.

358 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

apportioned, and in the view of the sharers, most unfairly. The
.housekeepers only had to pay the rent and the cost of repairs.
The sharers had to find hired men and boys, and to meet all
charges for apparel, poets, music, lights, and so forth. The
Lord Chamberlain was apparently impressed by the justice
of the representation, and made an order for a transfer of
interests in both houses.

The method of organization adopted by the Burbadges
was subject to abuses, both from alienation and from the
agglutinative tendencies of Heminge and Condell. But, at
any rate during the earlier years of its working, it seems to
have served its purpose of attaching the individual King’s men,
by means of a capital investment, to the welfare and stability
of their company. It was adopted by their principal rivals,
by the Queen’s men at the Red Bull from the beginning
of the reign, by Alleyn and the Prince’s men at the Fortune
from a somewhat later date. Certainly these companies
rested upon a firmer foundation than those which had to
look for their theatre to an outside capitalist, especially
when that outside capitalist was Philip Henslowe. I have
more than once had occasion to mention Henslowe, whose
personality stands out, more clearly perhaps than any other,
from the stage history of our whole period. It is to the
labours of my friend Dr. Greg that we owe an adequate
presentment of that personality. He appears to have been
a younger son of a good family, originally of Devonshire, but
settled in Sussex, where his father was Master of the Game
in Ashdown Forest and Brill Park. He had evidently had
little formal education, and was a poor man when, probably
at some date in the ’seventies, he married Agnes Woodward,
a wealthy widow, to whose former husband he had been
‘ servant *. Agnes had a daughter Joan, who in 1592 married
Edward Alleyn, between whom and Henslowe, ever after if
not before this event, the closest business and personal
relations existed. The occupation which Henslowe thus, in
the traditional manner of apprentices, acquired may have
been that of a dyer ; he is described in documents of about
1584-7 as ‘ citizen and dyer of London ’. But he had a shrewd
business capacity, which he turned to many other ways of
making money. He was at one time engaged in the manu-
facture of starch. From at least 1587 onwards he was
interested in theatrical property. Between 1593 and 1596
he was carrying on, through agents, a pawnbroking establish-
ment. By 1592 at latest he had obtained an appointment
as Groom of the Chamber at Court.^ In 1603 he was pro-

* This is the only point on which I have anything to add to Dr. Greg's

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

359

moted to be Gentleman Sewer of the Chamber to King James.
About 1594 he began to finance the Southwark bear-baiting,
under a licence from the Master of the Royal Game of Paris
Garden, and by arrangement with Alleyn who held the
Bear Garden, and Jacob Meade who was Keeper of the
Bears. After more than one unsuccessful attempt, Henslowe
and Alleyn secured a transfer to themselves of the joint
Mastership of Paris Garden in 1604. Meanwhile Henslowe
was steadily amassing house property, most of it in South-
wark, and some of it, at least by origin, of a rather question-
able character.^ His own residence is given in 1577 ^ the
Liberty of the Clink, more precisely in 1593 as ‘ on the bank
sid right over against the clink *, whereby is doubtless meant
the prison which gave its name to the Liberty ; and in the
Clink he continued to dwell to the end. For subsidies he was
regularly assessed at £ 10 , He filled parochial offices, becoming

personal information as to Henslowe ; it is important as bearing on the
history of Lord Strange’s men (q.v.). He is described as Groom of the
Chamber in an undated document (Henslowe Papers, 42) belonging to
a series dealing with the opening of the Rose for Strange’s men in a long
vacation. This cannot be put later than 1 592, as there was plague through-
out the long vacation of 1593 and Lord Strange became Earl of Derby
in Sept. 1593. On the other hand, Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 9 ; Henslowe
Papers, 36), followmg Warner, 8, argues that Henslowe must have become
Groom of the Chamber later than 7 April 1592, since he is not named
in a list of Grooms appended to a warrant of that date and is named
in a similar list of 26 Jan. 1599. These warrants are m Addl. MS. 5750,
ff. 1 14, 1 16. They are original warrants for the * watching liveries ’ wMch
were issued annually, but on irregular dates, to the Yeomen of the Guard
and to the Groom Porter and fourteen Grooms of the Chamber. A com-
plete series of copies of these warrants is preserved in Lord Chamberlain's
Records, v. 90, 91, and shows that Henslowe only received a watching
livery during three consecutive years, on 14 Nov. 1597, 26 Jan. 1599,
and 27 Oct. 1599. Yet we know that he was a Groom in Aug. 1593 from
the address on one of Alleyn’s letters (Henslowe Papers, 36), and about
1595-6 from a petition to the first Lord Hunsdon, who died in June 1596
(Henslowe Papers, 44). Therefore the absence of his name from the livery
list of 7 April 1592 is no proof that he was not then already a Groom.
Probably Henslowe was only an Extraordinary Groom, and only some
of the Extraordinary Grooms were needed to supplement the twelve
Ordinary ones for watching purposes.

^ Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 22, 25) shows that Henslowe almost certainly
held a lease of the Barge, the Bell, and the Cock ‘ vppon the banke called
Stewes ’, describes these houses as ‘ licensed brothels ', and infers that
Henslowe was * the intermediate landlord between the stew-keepers and
the Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of Winchester ’. It is
possible that the tradition, as well as the name, of the district endured
into Elizabeth’s reign, but I>r, GiTeg forgets, in his Voltairean mood, that
the system of episcopal licences terminated in the reign of Henry VIII
(Rendle, Bankside, xi). Ultimately Alleyn secured on the property the
settlement of his wife Constance, daughter of John Donne, Dean of
St. Paul’s, which must surely have established its respectability.

36o the control OF THE STAGE

vestryman of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1607, church-
warden in 1608, and governor of the free grammar school in
‘ 1612. His death on 6 January 1616 was followed almost
immediately by that of his widow in April 1617, and most
of his property passed into the hands of the Alleyns, together
with a mass of papers, which are now amalgamated with
Alleyn’s own at Dulwich. The collection is of the first
importance both for dramatic and for social history. It
contains title-deeds of theatres, agreements, and bonds
entered into by companies of players, private correspondence
between the members of Henslowe’s family and with the
poets and actors dependent upon him, inventories of stage
costumes, book-holder’s ‘ plots * or outlines of plays, and
many other documents touching in innumerable ways upon
the finance and control of the stage. It also contains
Henslowe’s famous ’ Diary ’. This is not in fact a diary at
all, but a folio memorandum book, which Henslowe used
principally during 1592-1603, and in which he entered in
picturesque confusion particulars of accounts between himself
and the companies occupying his theatres, together with
jottings on many personal and business matters, and records
of loans, which are often written, signed, or witnessed in the
autographs of players and poets.

From the diary and the related documents it is possible
to reconstruct in its main outlines the history of Henslowe’s
theatrical enterprises, and to contrast his policy as a capitalist
with that of his rivals, the Burbadges. During the earlier
years covered by our information, the theatre with which he
was mainly concerned was the Rose, which he had himself
built on the Bankside, although he appears also to have
had an interest in the distant and practically disused house
at Newington Butts, At one or other of these he entertained
a succession of companies for the short periods during which
playing was possible in the plague-stricken period of 1592-4.
In the autumn of 1594 he settled down with Alleyn and
the Admiral’s men at the Rose, and this combination lasted,
with some reorganization of the company in 1597, until 1600,
when the Admiral’s men moved to the newly built Fortune,
and were succeeded a couple of years later at the Rose by
Lord Worcester’s men. It seems clear from an analysis of the
accounts which he kept during 1592-7, that Henslowe, like
the housekeepers at the Globe, was in the practice of taking
his profits as landlord in the form, not of a fixed rent, but of
a share of the daily takings at the theatre, and in his case
also the sum allotted seems to have been half the proceeds
of the galleries as distinct from the outer doors of the play-

THE ACTOR^S ECONOMICS 361

house. He was responsible for keeping the building in repair,
and for the fees to the Master of the Revels for licensing its
use ; all other outgoings had presumably to be met by the
company. If, as sometimes happened, the theatre was
put at the disposal of some fencer or other performer not
belonging to the company, the profits of the subletting were
apportioned between Henslowe and the actors.^ It should be
added that, under an agreement entered into when the
building of the Rose was being planned in 1587, Henslowe
had assigned half his profits for a term of eight years and
a quarter to one John Cholmley in return for fixed quarterly
payments. The covenants of the agreement entitled the
parties jointly to appoint actors to perform in the play-house,
and gatherers to collect the entrance fees, and reserved to
each of them the right ‘ to suffer theire frendes to go in for
nothings ’. They were to share the cost of repairs and
Cholmley, who was a grocer, was to have the monopoly of
selling drink on the premises. The agreement was pi^obably
terminated by Cholmley’s death ; if not, it would have
served Henslowe for an insurance over the lean years of
the long plague.^

The character of Henslowe’s entries in the diary changes
towards the end of 1597, but the indications do not suggest
any alteration in the conditions upon which the Admiral’s
men remained his tenants. On the other hand, the new
series of accounts reveals certain relations between himself
and the company for which there is no known analogy
in the organization of the King’s men. Quite apart from
payments for the use of the theatres, the players had to meet
divers costs of maintenance, including the purchase of play-
books from dramatists and the provision of properties and
garments for new productions. These charges were heavy
and fluctuating, and proved a difficulty for men who lived
from hand to mouth, and had acquired the thriftless habit
of sharing their takings weekly or even daily, and keeping
no reserve fund. Henslowe, as a capitalist, came to the
rescue. Perhaps tentatively at first, but certainly from 1597
as a regular system, he met the claims of poets and tradesmen
as they fell due, and debited the sums advanced to a running
account with the company, which forms the main subject-
matter of the diary. Of course he had to recoup himself
from time to time ; and Dr. Greg has made it pretty clear
that, when the system was in full working, he did this by

‘ Henslowe, i. 98, * Jemes Cranwigge the 4 of November 1598 playd
his callenge in my howsse & I sholde haue hade for my parte xxxx* which
the company hath receuyd & oweth to me * Cf. vol. ii, p. 408.

362 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

claiming a lien upon the residue of the gallery takings which,
although collected by his own ‘ gatherers would otherwise,
under the tenancy agreement, have been handed over to
the sharers. For a time he seems to have satisfied himself
with reserving half of this residue towards his account.
In July 1598, however, he notes in the diary ‘ Here I begyne
to receue the wholle gallereys Even so the repayments
did not keep pace with the expenditure, and from time to
time he struck a balance and took an acknowledgement from
the company of the amount of their outstanding debt. Most
of Henslowe’s advances were either for properties and apparel
or for the writing of plays, and I see no reason to doubt that
substantially the whole expenditure of the company under
these two heads passed through his hands. Sometimes, but
not always, he paid the fee demanded by the Master of the
Revels for the licensing of a new play ; and occasionally he
put his hand in his pocket for travelling or legal expenses,
or for the shot of a corporate jollification at a tavern. On
the other hand, there were certain regular outgoings with
which he had nothing to do, and for which the company must
have had to make provision in other ways ; for lighting and
cleaning and the rushes which obviated the need for cleaning,
for music, for the wages of stage attendants and those actors
who were not sharers, the ‘ hirelings *, as they were called
from an early date.^ Probably the boys who took the female
parts were apprenticed to individual sharers ; in one case
a boy was apprenticed to Henslowe, who charged the com-
pany or one of its members a weekly sum for his services.*

‘ Cf. Gosson, S.A. 39 (App. C, No. xxii), * the very hyrelings of some
of our players, which stand at reuersion of vi s by the weekc ' ; Dekker,
News from Hell (Works, ii. 146), * a companie of country players, being
nine in number, one sharer, & the rest iomymen ' ; The Raven* s Almanac
(iv. 193), * a number of you (especially the hirelings) shall be with emptie
purses at least twice a week ' ; Jests to Make you Merrie (ii. 353), * Nay,
you mercenary soldiers, or you that are as the Switzers to players (I meane
the hired men) by all the prognostications that I haue seene this yeare,
you make but a hard and a hungry lining of it by strowting [? * stTowling ']
up and downe after the waggon. Leaue therefore, O leaue the company
of such as lick the fat from your beards (if you haue any) and come
hether, for here 1 know you shall be sharers

* Cf. Chapman, May Day, iii. iii. 228, * Afore heaven, *tis a sweet fac'd
child : methinks he would show well in woman's attire. . . . I'll help
thee to three crownes a week for him, and she can act well The will
of Augustine Phillips in 1605 mentions his apprentice James Sands, and
his late apprentice, Samuel Gilburne. The ‘ boys ' of various Admiral's
men appear in Henslowe's diary and in the Dulwich * plots ' of plays ;
cf, Henslowe, i. 71, 73, * Thomas Dowtones biger boy ' ; Henslowe Papers,
*37» 142, 147, ‘ E. Dutton his boye ', * M*”. Allens boy *, * M'. Townes

boy * M^. Jones his boy ', ' M**. Denygtens little boy

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 363

It is, however, interesting to observe that in the case of the
Admiral’s men, the legal instruments which secured the
continuity of the services of individual actors sometimes at
least took the form, for sharers no less than for hirelings, not
of bonds given to their fellows, but of contracts of service
entered into, under penalties for breach, with Henslowe
himself. As it was open to Henslowe to terminate these
contracts, the constitution of the company was to a certain
extent dependent upon his good will, and in fact he more than
once refers to them as ‘ my company He was not, however,
in any strict sense the ‘ director * or even the ‘ manager ’
of the company. Dr. Greg more aptly describes him as their
‘ banker The entries of his advances on their behalf are
so worded as to imply that they were made on specific
authorities given by one or more leading members of the
company ; and some of these authorities in fact exist in
the shape of letters asking Henslowe to make payments to
poets in respect of plays which the company have heard anch
approved. That in practice the banker had a considerable
say in influencing the policy of the company is probable
enough ; and also that to the poor devils of poets he, rather
than the actors, must have often appeared in the welcome
guise of paymaster. Both poets and actors were under frequent
personal obligations to him for small loans ; ® and he sometimes
found the capital sum necessary to enable an actor to become
a sharer, and took it back by instalments.^

Henslowe, i. 201 ; Henslowe Papers, 48. There is also a contract by
which Thomas Downton of the Admiral's men hires an unnamed player
(Henslowe, i. 40). Augustine Phillips (1605) calls Christopher Beeston his
‘ servant \ and Nicholas Tooley (1623) calls Richard Burbadge, then
deceased, his ‘ late master But Beeston and Tooley' were King’s men
by patent before the dates in question, and it is a little difficult, though
not impossible, to suppose that a hireling would appear in a patent.
Probably the terms only retain the memory of former apprenticeships.

* Henslowe, 11. 120.

® The diary records loans to Jonson, Chapman, Porter, Chettle, Day,
Haughton, Munday, Dekker, Anthony Wadeson, and Robert Wilson, and
to the actors Martin Slater, John Singer, Thomas Towne, Edward Dutton,
Robert Shaw, Thomas Downton, William Borne, John Helle, Gabriel
Spencer, Richard Alleyn, John Tomson, Humphrey Jeffes, Anthony Jeffes,
Richard Jones, Charles Massey, John Duke, Richard Bradshaw, Thomas
Heywood, William Kempe, Thomas Blackwood, John Lowin, Abraham
Savery, Richard Perkins ; as well as to Henslowe 's nephew, Francis
Henslowe. Except Francis Henslowe and Abraham Savery, of the Queen's
men, and John Tomson, of whom nothing is known, all these men are
traceable in connexion with either the Admiral’s or Worcester's men.
A few of the loans to poets, e.g. to Chettle, seem to have been on behalf
of the Admiral's men, rather than of Henslowe himself.

* Henslowe, i. 47, 63, 67, ‘ R**. of Bengemenes Johnsones share as
ffoloweth ' ; ‘ R<i. of Gabrell Spencer at severall tymes of his share in the

364 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

Henslowe’s method of financing the Admiral’s men endured
^ for some time after their transference to the Fortune. Here,
however, they prospered, and he notes himself in the diary
as ‘ begininge to receue of thes meane ther privet deates which
they owe vnto me The diary is practically closed in 1603.
An exceptional entry in 1604 records that he ‘ caste vp all the
acowntes from the begininge of the world vntell this daye *
with the Prince’s men, as they had then become, and found
* all reconynges consernynge the company in stocke generall
descarged & my sealfe descarged to them of al deates It
is possible that henceforward the relations of the company
were less with Henslowe than with Alleyn, with whom they
had entered into some kind of ‘ composicion ’ in 1600. Cer-
tainly the few remaining documents with regard to the
Prince’s men now at Dulwich seem to be of Alleyn rather than
Henslowe provenance. Henslowe had, however, by agreement
with Alleyn, a half interest in the ‘ house ’ of the Fortune, an
arrangement which may have been modified if, as seems
probable, some of the sharers were taken into partnership as
housekeepers in 1608. Henslowe had a running account with
the Earl of Worcester’s men at the Rose from 1602 ; and
these relations had probably also terminated when, as the
Queen’s men, they set up on an independent basis at the Red
Bull in 1604. About 1611-15, however, we again become
able to study Henslowe’s finances, shortly before his death,
in a group of related documents which illustrate and are
illustrated by the diary in an extremely interesting way.^
The first of these is a bond in £500 given to Henslowe by the
Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1611 for the observance of certain
articles. Unfortunately the articles are not annexed, but
it may perhaps be taken for granted that they constituted
an agreement under which the company were to play at
a house provided by Henslowe. This may in the first instance
have been the Swan, but in the spring of 1613 Henslowe
probably acquired an interest in the Whitefriars, and in the
following autumn he and his partner Jacob Meade entered
into a contract with a builder to convert the old Bear Garden
into a house capable of being used for plays, as well as for
baiting. At this, which was renamed the Hope, the Lady
Elizabeth’s men certainly performed. The second document,

gallereyes as foloweth ' ; ‘A juste acownte of the money which I haue
receued of Humfreye Jeaffes hallffe sheare ... as foloweth. . . . This
some was payd backe agayne vnto the companey of my lord admeralles
players ... & they shared yt amonste them '. In such cases Henslowe
may merely have acted as agent of the company in securing the payment
out of gallery money of sums due from incoming sharers.

• Henslowe Papers, 18, 23, 86, iii, 123 ; cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's).

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 365

in fact, consists of articles between Henslowe and Meade on
the one side and Nathan Field on behalf of the company ,
on the other, whereby the former undertake during a term of
three years to house the company, to give them the use of
an existing stock of apparel, including a suitable supply for
travelling purposes if necessary, and to disburse such sums
upoh the furnishing of new plays with apparel as four or five
sharers, whom Henslowe and Meade arc to name for the
purpose, may require. They also undertake to make similar
disbursements for plays, receiving repayment after the
second or third day’s performance, to remove non-conforming
players at the request of a majority of the company, and to
hand over all forfeits for failures to attend rehearsal and the
like. The close of the document is mutilated, but it is pretty
clear that it provided for a nightly account of gallery takings,
out of which Henslowe and Meade were to retain half for
rent, and the other half towards the repayment of disburse-
ments on apparel and of an outstanding debt of £124 until
this should be extinguished. It is to be noted that, since the
days of the Admiral’s men, Henslowe had differentiated
between the procedure for recovering his advances on
account of apparel and of play-books respectively. The articles
contemplate that individual players will be under contracts
with Henslowe and Meade, and the third document is such
a contract, dated 7 April 1614, with one Robert Dawes,
who then joined the company. Certain covenants therein
with regard to the personal conduct of the actor have already
been described. In addition he bound himself to play for
three years as a sharer in such company as Henslowe and
Meade might appoint, and to consent to the retention by them
of a moiety of the gallery and tiring-house takings for the
use of the house, and of the other moiety towards the cost of
apparel and the debt of £124. Henslowe and Meade also
reserve the right to use the house for baiting on one day. in
each fortnight. The fourth document is the most illuminating
of all. It is divided into two sections, one headed Articles
of Grieuance against Mr, Hinchlowe^ the other Articles of
Oppression against Mr. Hinchlowe ; and although unsigned
was evidently drawn up by the company in the spring of
1615, for reference to some arbitrator, or perhaps to the Lord
Chamberlain. The charges against Henslowe are partly
of definite acts of dishonesty in the manipulation of his
accounts with the company, partly of an oppressive use of
his legal position to his own advantage and their detriment.
If the allegations are well founded, he had cheated them by
failing to bring to account sums due to them and to make

366 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

a heavy payment with which they were debited, by charging
the common stock with loans made to individuals, by putting
an inflated value upon apparel taken over from himself, by
saddling them with the cost of an excessive number of
gatherers and with bonuses which he had promised out of
his own pocket, in order to induce particular actors to join
the company. Under these heads they claim a heavy rebate
against the debt of £600 which he was maintaining to be due
from them. They assert that, to gain his ends, he had bribed
their own representative Field ; that while bonds had been
taken from them to an amount far in excess of their real
obligations, the articles binding Henslowe and Meade had
never been signed ; that Henslowe had taken advantage of
this to repudiate his liability to hand over the apparel and
play-books, for the greater part of which the company had
already paid ; and that he had similarly taken advantage
of the fact that the agreements with the hired men were in
his name to withdraw these men, and thus force a recon-
struction of the company, whenever it suited his convenience.
Thus, they say, ‘ within three yeares hee hath broken and
dissmembred five companies It is a little difficult to make
up the number of five companies, even if the Children of the
Revels, who during the years covered by the statement
were absorbed for a time in the Lady Elizabeth’s men, are
included. But the transactions described serve well to
illustrate the distinction between the status of a company
as a body of household servants and its status as a legal
association, since there is no reason to doubt that, throughout
all the shifting phases of its relations to Henslowe, a con-
tinuous body of players performed in public and at Court
under the title of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, and by
authority of the patent issued to these men in 1611. One other
point, in which Hehslowe’s earlier practice appears to have
undergone modification by the period of his connexion with
the Lady Elizabeth’s men, emerges from his correspondence
with the playwright Robert Daborne. Instead of merely
paying for Daborne’s plays as agent for the company, as had
been his practice for the Admiral’s and Lord Worcester’s
men, he appears to have bought the plays himself, and resold
them, probably at a profit, to the company.^

The protesting players represent Henslowe’s dealings with
them as governed by a desire to be what the modern capitalist
calls * master in his own house They declare that he gave
the reason of his often breaking with them in his own words,

Cf. p. 375.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 367

* Should these f ellowes come out of my debt, I should have
noe rule with them The principle is plausible enough, .
and is familiar to tradesmen in all poor neighbourhoods. The
man burdened with debt must lose the fruits of his labour,
because he is not free to revise his contracts on terms more
beneficial to himself. Once the players got out of debt and
accumulated a reserve fund, they would acquire their own
theatre, and Henslowe’s might stand empty. If the charges
were justified — and as Dr. Greg points out, we have not
Henslowe’s answer — he certainly resorted to oppressive
devices to prevent the Lady Elizabeth’s men from achieving
independence. It must not be too hastily assumed that
he followed a similar policy in his earlier dealings with the
Admiral’s men. So far as we know, they brought no accusa-
tion against him, and the connexion seems to have been
advantageous to both parties. The Admiral’s men held
together, and maintained a standing hardly inferior to that
of their principal rivals, the Chamberlain’s men. They had
Alleyn for a fellow ; and it may be that Alleyn, whose

* industrie and care according to the deposition of a com-
mon acquaintance, ‘ were a great meanes of the bettering of
the estate of the said Philip Henslowe ’, was able to give
his partner advice, more equitable and perhaps in the long
run not less profitable, even from the capitalist point of view,
than was afterwards forthcoming from ‘ intemperate M**.
Meade ’.^ At any rate there is an agreement which shows
that a compromise was arrived at after Henslowe’s death
with Alleyn and Meade upon the question of the disputed
debt.* I am not Henslowe’s biographer, and am therefore
not concerned either to whitewash or to vilify his character.
But it is fair to say that, outside the Articles of Grievance
and Oppression^ there is not much, in the mass of papers
which have descended to us, that necessarily bears an
unfavourable interpretation. Henslowe’s private loans to
players and poets were innumerable. They were generally,
but not always, repaid, and it would be difficult to
prove that he even exacted interest in such cases, although
it is possible that the full sums entered in his accounts
did not really change hands. On the other hand, too
much stress must not be laid on the expressions of esteem
with which his debtors approached him. Thus. Daborne
dwells on ‘ your tried curtesy * and ‘ the great love I have felt
from you and Field, addresses him as ‘ Father Hinchlow ’
and signs himself ‘ your loving son *, as if he were Ben

' Henslowe, ii. 19.

* Henslowe Papers, 90, 93 ; cf. ch. xiii (Prince Charles’s).

368 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

Jonson.^ An application for money is, however, not even an
affidavit. In his will he appears to have stated that he had
not used his wife very well and would make amends ; * but
his private correspondence reveals family affection and a turn
for pious sentiment, probably sincere. Neither quality
is necessarily inconsistent with unscrupulous methods of
business. Whether Henslowe was a good or a bad man
seems to me a matter of indifference. He was a capitalist.
And my object is to indicate the disadvantages under which
a company in the hands of a capitalist lay, in respect of
independence and economic stability, as compared with one
conducted upon the lines originally laid down by the Bur-
bages for the tenants of the Globe. Not being owners of their
own theatre, such a company were liable to eviction, and were
drained to a large extent of the profits of their prosperous
years. Relying upon their financier to meet in the first instance
all extraordinary expenditure, they had no occasion to build
up a reserve fund, and constantly tended to drift into debt.
Organized upon a legal basis which made an act of association
between the members of less importance than individual
contracts entered into by sharers and hirelings alike with the
capitalist, they were at his mercy if, for purposes of his own,
he chose to use his powers under those contracts to bring
about their dissolution.^

A few figures bearing on the actual profits of playing can
be brought together. And first for the * house *. Henslowe’s
takings at the Rose, as disclosed by the diary, seem to have
averaged about 305. a day during 1592-7. A short season at
Newington Butts brought him in no more than gs, a day. As
the Rose was normally open for about 240 days in the year,
his total annual receipts may be estimated at £360. No doubt
the cost of upkeep was substantial. The landlord had to
find a site, build a house, maintain it in repair, and take out
a licence. The ground-rent of the Rose was £7, of the Globe
£14 105 ., of the Fortune £16. The total rent of the site and
building of the Blackfriars was £40. The building of the
Fortune in 1600 cost £5^20^ and its rebuilding in 1622 £1^000 ;
the rebuilding of the Globe in 1613 about £1,400 ; the con-

» Henslowe Papers, 67, 70, * Henslowe, ii. 19.

3 Similar methods were employed by Henslowe's rival, Francis Langley,
at the Swan (q.v.) in 1597^ He provided apparel for a company, and was
allowed for it out of their ‘ moytie of the gains for the seuerall standinges
in the galleries of the said howse which belonged to them *. Having
quarrelled with the company before he was completely reimbuned, he
kept the apparel. He took individual bonds to play with him for three
years, released some of the company from their bonds, and sued the rest,
who could not play without their fellows, for breach of contract.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

369

version of the Bear Garden into the Hope in 1613, £360.
There was probably some set-off in all these cases for the
profits from taphouses and other tenements attached to
the theatres ; this was estimated at from £20 to £30 for the
Globe and Blackfriars together in 1635. There were also
occasional lettings to outsiders.^ The housekeepers in 1635
complained of the ‘ chargeable reparacions ’ ; in earlier years,
when theatres were built largely of wood, they must have
been more chargeable still. The Rose was not built earlier
than 1587, but Henslowe had to spend £108 on it in 1592.
The fee charged by the Master of the Revels for licensing
a theatre rose during 1592-9 from £1 to £3 a month. The
only estimates of net profits are for the King’s men and of
rather late date. The pleadings in Ostler v. Heminges (1615) give
a single housekeeper’s profits as 20 from one-fourteenth of the
Globe and £20 from one-seventh of the Blackfriars, thus indicat-
ing £280 and £i^q as the total annual value of the * houses ’
at the Globe and Blackfriars respectively ; those in Witter v.
Heminges and Condell (1619), coming from a less trustworthy
witness, allege that the Globe was worth £420 to £560 before
the fire and more after the rebuilding.* The bearing of the
figures is complicated by our ignorance of the proportions in
which the King’s men made use of their two theatres. By
1635 the importance of the Blackfriars had outstripped that
of the Globe. Its ‘ house ’ then yielded £7oo-£8oo a year ;
that of the Globe about 545. a day, nearly twice as much as
the Rose half a century earlier.

As to the earnings of a sharer we have even less information.
One of the disputants in 1635 them at no more than
3s. a day at the Globe ; another at £iSo a year from all
sources. If both were accurate, the Blackfriars must by that
date have been doing far* better business than the Globe,
even after allowing for the inclusion in the £180 of a share of
the fees for private performances at Court and elsewhere.
The customary Court fee was £10, or £6 13s. 4^. if the King was
not present. Private performances were ordinarily at night,
and did not interfere with public performances in the after-
noon. If the Court was out of London, however, the theatre
had to be closed. No special allowance seems to have been
made for this until about 1631, when the fee was doubled
for a performance in the daytime or away from London.*
The King’s men got the principal share of the Court work,

‘ J. Hall, Virgedemiarum (i 597), i. 3, appears to satirise performances
by amateurs * upon a hired stage * ; cf. p. 361.

• Similarly in Keysarv. Burbadge (1610) the pleadings of Robert Keysar
grossly exaggerated the profits of the Blackfriars. * Cf. ch. vii.

3229*1 B b

370

THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

being called on in 1611-12 for as many as twenty-two plays.
Their Court fees during 1603-16 amounted on an average to
£125 a year.^ The exact number of sharers is not known ; it
was probably not more than twelve. All things considered, it
is not unreasonable to put the earnings of a sharer in the
King’s men during the first decade of the seventeenth century
at about £100 to ^^150 a year, to which, if he were a * house-
keeper ’ with an interest in both houses, he might be able
to add another £40 or £50. This estimate agrees with
Sir Henry Herbert’s valuation of the shares which he held
before the war in the companies other than the King’s at
£100 each on an average.^ Sir Sidney Lee’s figure of ^^700
for Shakespeare’s total professional income, which includes
£40 for the books of his plays, seems to me vastly over-
estimated.® Even the more modest £200 or so was a hand-
some income for the time, since the purchasing power of money
in the seventeenth century is variously reckoned at from
five to eight times as much as at present. Of course, in times
of inhibition from plague or other cause the income vanished
altogether, and was very inadequately replaced by the
meagre gains of travelling, together with the allowance
made by King James to his men for private practice during
the infection.

The gross takings of the sharers were naturally much greater.
But they were subject to heavy outgoings. The King’s men
reckoned these in 1635 at £3 a day or from £900 to £1,000
a year for hired ‘ journeymen ’ and boys, music, lights, and
so forth, in addition to ‘ extraordinary ’ charges for apparel
and poets.^ The wages of a hireling are given by Gosson

* C£. App. B. * Variorum, iii. 266.

® Lee, 315; cf. A. Thaler, Shakespeare's Income {S. P. xv. 82), who
halves Lee’s estimate.

^ In 1628 Sir Henry Herbert notes in his office-book (Variorum, iii. 176),
* The Kinges company with a general consent and alacritye [poor devils !
E. K. C.] have given mee the benefitt of too dayes in the yeare, the one
in summer, thother in winter, to bee taken out of the second daye of
a revived playe, att my owne choyse. The housekeepers have likewyse
given their shares, their dayly charge only deducted, which comes to some
2^ s®. this 25 May, 1628.’ Herbert words it oddly, but the * dayly charge ’
must be that of the sharers, not the housekeepers, who had none, and
the estimate agrees fairly with that of 1635. Herbert took during 1628-33
sums of from £i $s. to £6 ys., averaging £4 8s. 6d., out of five performances
at the Globe, and £g i6s. to £iy los., averaging £13 los., from five per-
formances at the Blackfriars. The gross takings averaged therefore
£6 13s. 6d. at the Globe and £is 15s. at the Blackfriars. In 1633 Herbert
compounded for a payment of £10 at Christmas and £10 at Midsummer.
But in 1662 (Variorum, iii. 266) he included amongst the incomings of
his office the profits of a summer's day and a winter's day at the Black-
friars, which he valued at £$0 each.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 371

in 1579 2is 6 s. a week ; some of Henslowe’s agreements of
1597 provide for wages of 55., 6s, 8d,, and 8s,^ There was some .
economy to be secured by doubling small parts.^ How far
this was facilitated by any use of masks is open to doubt.^
Boys were regularly employed to take female parts, and
although it would be going rather too far to say that a woman
never appeared upon an Elizabethan stage, women were not
included in the ordinary companies.^ The boys were
apprenticed to individuals, and their masters had to pay
rather than receive premiums. In return they charged
wages to the company. Henslowe gave £S for a boy in 1597
and got 35. a week from the Admiral’s for his wages.
John Shank in 1635 claimed that he had had to give £40 for
a single boy, and £200 in all.® Contributions to local rates came
to about £s a year.® The cost of apparel and properties is diffi-
cult to estimate. A company bought or accumulated a stock,
and might also have at its disposal a stock belonging to the
owner of its theatre. Individual actors may have had their
private wardrobes."^ Fresh purchases were only necessitated
by new productions, but these were frequent. The special
mounting of Court performances was helped out by the
Revels Office.® The actor in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit
(1592) boasted that his share of apparel would not be sold for

‘ Cf. p. 363 and ch. xiii (Admiral’s).

* Cf. W. W. Greg in T. L. S. (12 Feb. 1920) and his analysis of the
Dulwich * plots ' {H. P. 152). Here also we find the tireman, gatherers,
and attendants used as ' supers ’.

^ Puttenham, i. 14, says that Roscius ' brought vp these vizards, which
we see at this day vsed ’. In The Longer Thou Livest, 1748, 1796, God's
Judgement has * a terrible visure * and Confusion * an ill fauowred visure *,
and in All For Money, 389, 1440, 1462, Damnation, Judas, and Dives
have vizards. But this is early evidence, and perhaps drawn from the
private stage. Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596, An Anatomy, 5),
speaks of ‘ an ill-favoured vizor, such as I have seen in stage plays, when
they dance Machachinas ’, but this rather tells against the use by ordinary
actors at that date.

* Women only began to act regularly at the Restoration ; cf. Ward,

iii. 253. There had been occasional earlier examples ; even in 161 1 Coryat.
Crudities, i. 386, says that at Venice ' I saw women acte, a thing that
I never saw before, though I have heard that it hathe beene sometimes
used in London '. The exceptions are, I think, such as prove the rule ;
private plays such as Hymen's Triumph, Vernier’s gulling show of England's
Joy, the Italian tumblers of 1574, the yirago Moll Frith at the Fortune
(cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Dekker, Roaring Girl). On 22 Feb. 1583 Richard Madox
* went to the theater to see a scurvie play set out al by one virgin, which
there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we stayed not the matter '
{Cotton MSS. App. xlvii, f. 6^ ; cf. S. P. Colonial, E. Indies, 221). As to
the skill of the boys, cf. Ben Jonson on Richard Robinson in The Devil
is an Ass, ii. viii. 64. * Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 316.

* Cf. ch. xvi (Swan). ’ Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral's). ® Cf. ch. vii.

372

THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

£200^ but he was fictitious. Richard Jones, in fact, sold his
share in a stock of apparel, play-books, instruments, and other
commodities for £sy 10s. in 1589. The cost of such things
has a tendency to grow. If the sums of from £^o to £So
received by retiring sharers early in the seventeenth century
may be taken as representing their interests in the stocks,
the total value of the contents of a tiring-house might be
anything from £500 to £1,000. Henslowe sold the stock of
the Lady Elizabeth’s men for £400 in 1615 ; apparently this
did not include their play-books, which they valued at £200.
I reckon that in 1597--1603 Henslowe spent in all £1,317 for
the Admiral’s men, or about £i for each day of playing ; of
this play-books accounted for £652, apparel and properties for
£561, and miscellaneous expenses for £103. The garments,
by Henslowe’s time at least, had become costly enough, as
much as £19 being given for a single cloak, while a tailor was
employed to make up satin at 125. 6d. and velvet at £i a yard.^
Second-hand finery was sometimes to be obtained from a
serving-man or a needy courtier.^ It was probably the lavish
use of apparel, more than anything else, which led both
friends and foes to dwell upon the stately furnishing of the
English theatres.® Strictly scenic effects were limited by the
Structural conditions of the stage, and Henslowe’s inventories
do not suggest that any vast stock of movable properties
was kept,^ Animals and monsters were freely introduced.®
Living dogs and even horses may have been trained ; but your
lion or bear or dragon was a creature of skin and brown paper.®

An old * book ’ could be bought for £2, but the value to
the company might be much more. A good stock piece was

* Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral’s).

2 Cf. the account of Platter in 1 599 (ch. xvi, introduction) ; also Donne,
Satire, iv. 180 (ed. Muses' Library, ii. 196) :

As fresh and sweet their apparels be. as be
The fields they sold to buy them. * For a king
Those hose are/ cry the flatterers ; and bring
Them next week to the theatre to sell ;
and Jonson, Underwoods, xxxii ;

Is it for these that Fine-man meets the street
Coached, or on foot-cloth, thrice changed every day.

To teach each suit he has the ready way
From Hyde Park to the stage, where at the last
His dear and borrowed bravery he must cast.

* Cf. App. C, Nos. XXX, xlvi ; Case Is Altered, ii. 4, * Theatres ’ ay,
and plays too, both tragedy and comedy, and set forth with as much
state as can be imagined * ; cf. Graves, 68.

* a. chh.’XJL,xid passim, dLTid Henslowe Papers, ® Wegener, 135.

* Henslowe Papers, 117, * j lyone skin ; j b^es 8k3me . . . j dragon
in fostes [FaM5/Ms] j lyone ; ij lyone heades ; j great horse with his leages ;
j black dogge *. For brown paper monsters, cf. App. C, Nos. xxii, xxx,
and for a controversy as to the use of live animals, ch. xx.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

373

a perpetual ‘ get-penny * and could, of course, be furbished
up from time to time.^ In Downton v. Slater (1598) the
Admiral’s men valued a misappropriated book at £13 6^. Sd.
and claimed £30 damages for withholding it. The court
awarded £10 10s, New plays cost more, and entailed fees of
ys, each to the Master of the Revels for licensing.^ A play by
Greene would fetch £6 135. 4^. about 1592. The prices paid
by the Admiral’s and Lord Worcester’s men between 1597
and 1603 ranged from £4 to £10 10s,; a fee of £6 may
be taken as about normal. ‘ An they’ll give me twenty
pounds a play, I’ll not raise my vein ’, says Antonio Balia-
dino, who is Anthony Munday, in The Case is Altered, a play
of about 1598.^ In 1613 Robert Daborne was bargaining
for plays with Henslowe at rates of from £10 to £20, and boast-
ing that he could get £25 elsewhere. It seems likely that
Henslowe charged a commission on these prices to the com-
pany. There are some traces of the system, used at a later
date, by which the author was entitled to a ‘ benefit ’ night
shortly after the production of a new play.^ He was also

* E. Hoe, IV. ii. 92, ‘ thy name shall be written upon conduits, and thy
deeds plaid i' thy lifetime by the best companies of actors, and be call'd
their get-peny ' ; Barth. Fatr, v. i. 13 (of a ‘ motion '), ‘ the Gunpowder-
plot, there was a get-peny I I haue presented that to an eighteene, or
twenty pence audience, nine times in an aftemoone Dekker, News from
Hell (1606, Works, ii. 146), speaks of ' a Cobler of Poetrie called a play-
patcher

* Henslowe, ii. 115 ; cf. ch. x. By the end of Sir Henry Herbert's

time the fee had been raised to ; even for an old play he exacted £1
{Variorum, hi, 266). ^ C. is A. 1. i.

* Henslowe, i. 113, 136 (Admiral's, 1599, 1601), 18 1 (Worcester's, 1602),
‘ for M'. Mundaye & the reste of the poets at the playnge of ^ John
Oldcastell the ferste tyme ' [in margin, ‘ as a gefte '] ; ‘ John Daye . . .
after the playinge of the 2 part of Strowde ' ; ‘ Thomas Deckers . . . over
& above his price of his boocke called A Medysen for a Cvrste Wiffe '.
These are exceptional disbursements. The Dal^me-Henslowe correspon-
dence of 1613-14 (Henslowe Papers, 71, 75, 76, 82) suggests a more regular
practice : ‘ I pay you half my earnings in the play ' ; ‘ We will hav but
twelv pownds and the overplus of the second day ' ; * You shall hav the
whole companies bonds to pay you the first day of my play being playd ' ;
‘ I desyr you should disburse but 12I a play till they be playd '. Probably
the actual day selected for the poet's benefit varied ; thus the third day
13 suggested by Dekker's prologue to // It he not Good, the Devil is in It
(1612), a Red Bull play:

not caring, so he gams

A cram'd third day, what filth drops from his brains.

Malone (Variorum, iii. 157) quotes later evidence for a variation of days,
together with Davenant, The Play-house to be Let :

There is an old tradition.

That in the times of mighty Tamberlane,

Of conjuring Faustus and the Beauchamps bold,

You poets used to have the second day.

This shall be ours, sir, and tomorrow yours.

The actual term ‘ benefit ' appears first in connexion with the interest of

374

THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

entitled to free admission to the house.^ The poets received

• their fees from Henslowe in instalments, drawing £i or so
in ‘ earnest * when the commission was given, and as each
batch of sheets was handed in, and the balance when the
play was finished. This plan proved disastrous to them.
The instalments often found them in a debtor’s prison, and
some of them became mere bond-slaves.^ Thus both Henry
Porter and Henry Chettle were reduced to making agreements
which pledged them to write for no other company than
the Admiral’s. The device is familiar to the modern pub-
lisher. Robert Daborne’s correspondence with Henslowe is
eloquent of the straits to which a hack playwright might be
brought. Daborne was a man of good family, and had law-
suits about his * estate ’, which added to his embarrassments.
He had been interested in the management of the Queen’s
Revels, and it may have been the absorption of this com-
pany by the Lady Elizabeth’s men that brought him into
contact with Henslowe. His letters preserved at Dulwich
run from April 1613 to July 1614.^ During this period he was
engaged upon at least four plays. The history of one of them,
the tragedy of Machiavel and the Devil^ may be taken as
typical. On 17 April 1613 he signed an agreement to complete
it by the end of May for an ‘ earnest ’ of £6 down, £4 on com-
pletion of three acts, and ‘ vpon delivery in of y® last
scean perfited ’ ; and for the observance of the agreement
he gave a bond of £20. On 25 April he wrote to borrow £\
from Henslowe, explaining that he was ‘ vpon y® sodeyn put
to a great extremity in bayling my man committed to New-
gate vpon taking a possession for me ’, and had unfortunately
taken ‘ less money of my kinsman a lawier that was with me
then servd my turn ’. On 3 May he got another £1, although
the three acts were not yet finished ; another on 8 May ;

the Master of the Revels (cf. p. 370), not that of the poet. Nor do we
know what exactly the ‘ overplus ' assigned to the poet was calculated
upon.

‘ B. Fair, v. iii. 30, ‘ What, doe you not know the Author, fellow
Flicker ? you must take no money of him ; he must come in gratis :
M^. Littlewit is a voluntary ; he is the Author \

* Henslowe, i. 83, 100, loi, 107, 119 (Admiral’s, 1598-1600), ‘to dise-
charge M**. Dicker owt of the cownter in the Powltrey ' ; ‘ Harey Chettell
to paye his charges in the Marshallsey ' ; ‘to descarge Thomas Dickers
frome the areaste of my lord chamberlens men ' ; ‘to descarge Harey
Chettell of his areste from Ingrome ‘ ; * W® Harton to releace hime owt
of the Clyncke ’ ; also Henslowe, i. 103, 165 (Admiral's, 1599, 1602),

* Harey Porter . . . gaue me his faythfulle promysse that I shold haue
alle the boockes which he writte ether him sellfe or with any other * ;
‘ at the sealleynge of H Chettells band to writte for them *.

•* Henslowe Papers, 67 ; cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth’s).

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

375

and another on i6 May, making £ii in all. ‘ Sir,’ he wrote,
‘ my occations of expenc have bin soe great & soe many I am
ashamed to think how much I am forct to press you.’ On
19 May he had probably handed in his three acts, as he then
signed an acquittance for £16 received up to date, noting at
the foot ‘ This play to be delivered in to Mr. Hinchlaw with
all speed ’. It was not, however, ready by 31 May, and on
5 June came a piteous appeal for an advance of £2 ‘ which
stands me vpon to send over to my counsell in a matter
concerns my whole estate ’. Henslowe shall not be the
loser by his kindness : ‘ wher I deale otherways then to your
content may I & myne want ffryndship in distress ’. By
10 June, ‘ necessity of term busines exacts me beyond my
custom to be trublesome vnto you ’, to the tune of yet
another £1. By this time Henslowe was evidently calling
out for the play ; and Daborne protests, ‘ I perceav you mis-
doubt my readynes. Sir, I would not be hyred to break my
ffayth with you ; before God they shall not stay one hour
for me,’ He was still protesting on 25 June ; but soon after
must have brought Machiavel and the Devil to an end and
drawn the £i still due to him on balance, since on 18 June
he was already beginning to negotiate for his next play,
The Arraignment of London, And so the correspondence goes
on ; the instalments always anticipated, the applications
always larded with declarations of his own honesty and with
mingled flattery and complaint of a patron who, generous
as he was, showed an inexplicable tendency to ‘ meat ’
Daborne ‘ by y® common measuer of poets ’. The result was
inevitable. Daborne’s terms came down from £20 to £12
and even ;^io a play ; and in addition to reselling to the
company at a profit, Henslowe seems on one occasion at
least to have squeezed out of Daborne ‘ half my earnings in
the play ’, by which, I take it, the proceeds of his benefit
are meant. By the end of 1613 Daborne was in considerable
distress ; ‘ if you doe not help me to tenn shillings by this
bearer, by the living God I am vtterly disgract ’. There is
not much more of the correspondence. It is clear from
another source that Daborne did not for some time get
free, for when Henslowe lay on his death-bed, Mrs. Daborne
called for some papers belonging to her husband, and Hens-
lowe gave her a bond for £20 of which she was ignorant,
possibly the very bond signed for Machiavel and the Devil,
saying, ‘ I knowe you and with all my hart doe freely forgive
you all that you owe me By 1618 Daborne had taken
orders. He became Chancellor of Waterford and Prebendary
» Henslowe, ii. 20.

376 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

and Dean of Lismore, and thus, as a contemporary poem has
it, ‘ died amphibious by the ministry *.

The wrongs of authors are not inarticulate, and they have
an appeal to posterity from the injustice of their age. The
exploitation of poets by the playing companies brought
about some cross-currents in the tone of the allusions to the
theatre, which are so frequent in occasional literature. On
the one hand, the pamphleteers, and in a less degree the
satirists, are with the players as against their enemies the
Puritans ; on the other hand, they have their own grievances
to publish and avenge. A note of hostility makes its appear-
ance not long after the first invasion of the province of stage-
writing by the university wits ; and by the embittered close
of Robert Greene’s reckless life the relations were acute.
Thomas Lodge in 1589 swore to abandon dramas and ‘ pennie-
knaves delight *.^ Thomas Nashe canvassed the players
in his prefatory epistle to Greene’s Menaphon (1589), and
Greene himself, with humour in his Quip for an Upstart
Courtier (1592), and in his autobiographical romances of
Never Too LcUe (1590) and Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592),
and with unsparing invective in the warning To those Gentle-
men his Quondam Acquaintance^ that spend their Wits in
making Plaies, which he appended to the latter. In these
pamphlets the ‘ vaine glorious tragedians ’ are twitted with
their mouthings on the stage, with their chameleon-like
shifting from the service of one lord to that of another,*
with the contrast between their rapid rise to wealth and their
obscurity when they carried their fardles afootback upon
the roads, with the romances and morals — Delphrigus and
The King of the Fairies ^ Man's Wit, and the Dialogue of
Dives — that formed their stock-in-trade before the masters
of arts came to their rescue. But the real gravamen is
that they live on the wits of scholars. They are ‘ apes ’,

‘ buckram gentlemen ’, ‘ a company of taffaty fooles ’ tricked
up with poets’ feathers, ‘ puppits that speake from our
mouths *, ‘ anticks garnisht in our colours *. They cleave like
burrs to their victims. An alleged comparison by Cicero
of the Roman actor Roscius to the crow in Aesop is called in
aid, and the taunt of * vpstart crow, beautified with our
feathers ’ is not spared to an actor before whose dramatic

* Lodge, Scillaes Metamorphosis (1589) :

by oath he bound me

To write no more of that whence shame doth grow,

Or tie my pen to Pennie-knaves delight.

* The pun on * comoedians * and ‘ camoelions * had been made by
‘ certayne gentlemen ' against the Duttons as early as 1580 ; of. ch. xiii
(Warwick's). It is still in use In Ratseis Ghost (1605) ; of. p. 340, n.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 377

genius that of Greene and his fellows was to fade as a rush-
light before the sun.^ The actors had something on their,
side to complain of, with Greene no less than with Daborne.
In a remorseful moment he tells us of the ‘ arch-plaimaking
poet * Roberto, how ‘ what euer he fingered aforehand was
the certaine meanes to vnbinde a bargaine * ; and a detractor
accuses him of selling the same play to two companies,
and defending himself by maintaining that no faith was to
be kept with players.* During the seventeenth century, it is

^ The Aesopic allusion is complicated by another to the story in
Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii. 4, 30, perhaps based on Martial, xiv. 73, of the
cobbler who tried to teach a crow to say ‘ Ave Caesar ' in flattery of
Augustus after the battle of Actium ; cf. Air. McKerrow's note to Nashe's
Pierce Penilesse (Works, iv. 105). Both ideas are suggested in Nashe’s
Menaphon preface, and Greene, in Francescos Fortunes (App. C, No. xliu),
combines them with a third story, also due, perhaps through Cornelius
Agrippa (App. C, No. xii), to Macrobius (Sat. in. xiv. 12), of a debate
on the respective powers of orator and actor between Cicero and Roscius,
into an obviously apocryphal jest : * Cicero. Why Roscius, art thou proud
with Esops Crow, being pranct with the glory of others feathers ? Of thy
selfe thou canst say nothing, and if the Cobler hath taught thee to say
Aue Caesar, disdain not thy tutor, because thou pratest in a kings chamber.’
Fleay, i. 258, chooses to identify the cobbler with Marlowe and Roscius
with Robert Wilson, and (being ignorant of Macrobius) cites the use of
the phrase ‘ Ave Caesar ’ in Edward III, i. i. 164, which he ascribes to
Marlowe, as evidence. Such equations are always hazardous. The point
of the passage is in the indebtedness of the players as a body to the poets
as a body. If any individual actor were designated as Roscius about
1590, it would be more likely to be Alleyn than another ; the compliment
to him is not unusual later (cf. ch. xv). But he had hardly a monopoly
of the name ; and in the present case there is really no reason to suppose
that Greene had any individual in mind, other than the historical Roscius.
The name is given to Ostler (q.v.) in 1611, and was in common generic
use for a player ; of. e.g. Marston, Satires (1598), 11. 42 :

That fair-framed piece of sweetest poesy.

Which Muto put between his mistress' paps . . .

Was penned by Roscio the tragedian ;
and Scourge of Villainy (1598), xi. 40 :

Say who acts best ? Drusus or Roscio ?

Similarly Fleay, ii. 279, has no real ground for suppo'^ing that the player
in the Groatsworth of Wit is Wilson in particular. If, again, any individual
is meant, it might just as well be James Burbage. Throughout Fleay
is inclined to exaggerate the extent of the theatrical references in the
pamphlets of Greene and Nashe. But R. Simpson is much worse in his
hopelessly uncritical Introduction to Faire Em in The School of Shak-
spere, ii. 339, which is an attempt to trace a vendetta against the actors
and especially Shakespeare as a main motive in Greene’s writmg from
1584 onwards. As far as I can see, Greene’s attacks on the stage are
limited to the three pamphlets named in the text, and Nashe’s to the
Menaphon preface. It is doubtful whether Greene was writing for the
stage at all before about 1 590 ; in any case it may be assumed that neither
writer was normally engaged in tilting against his paymasters.

* Cuthbert Conny-Catcher, The Defence of Conny-Catching (1592, Greene,
Works, xi. 75), ' What if I should prove you a Conny-Catcher, Maister

378 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

mainly Dekker, as critic of the players, no less than in other
.ways, who carries on the tradition of Greene and Nashe.^
Himself an active playwright, it is with black looks that he
stands by, in thronged term-time or at the coming of ambas-
sadors, and watches the companies battening upon the
fruits of divine poetry, like swine on acorns ; and when
plague arrives, although his own occupation be gone, it is
with savage glee that he sees the flag hauled down and the
doors closed, and his gloomy paymasters setting out once
more on the hard life of ‘ strowlers

One interesting result of the feud between poets and players
was that some of the former were led to encourage and even
acquire financial interests in a rival type of theatrical organiza-
tion which for a time at least entered into successful competi-
tion with the professional companies. This organization rested
upon the use of boy actors. I have elsewhere expounded the
important share taken by school plays in the earlier develop-
ment of the Renaissance drama.^ The grammar schools of

R. G. would it not make you blush at the matter ? . . . Aske the Queens
Players, if you sold them not Orlando Furioso for twenty Nobles, and
when they were in the country sold the same Play to the Lord Admirals
men for as much more. Was not this plaine Conny-Catching, Maister
R. G. } . . . But I hear, when this was objected, you made this excuse ;
that there was no more faith to be held with players than with them
that valued faith at the price of a feather ; for as they were comedians
to act, so the actions of their lives were Camelion-like ; that they were
uncertain, variable, time-pleasers, men that measured honesty by profit,
and that regarded their authors not by desert, but by necessity of time.*

» Dekker, Jests to Make you Merrte (1607, Works, ii. 303, 352), * As
proud as a player that feedes on the fruite of diuine poetry (as swine
on acorns). . . . O you that are the Poets of these sinfull times, ouer
whome the Players haue now got the vpper hand, by making fooles of
the poore country people, in driuing them like flockes of geese to sit
cackling in an old bame : and to swallow downe those playes for new
which here euery punck and her squire (like the interpreter and his poppet)
can rand out by heart they are so stale, and therefore so stincking ;
I know the Lady Pecunia and you come very hardly together, & therefore
trouble not you * ; cf. his references to ‘ strowlers * in note to p. 332.
Another seventeenth-century critic is H[enry] P[arrot], Laquei Ridicuhsi
or Springes for Woodcocks (1613), Epig. 131, Theatrum Licencia :

Cotta’s become a player most men know.

And will no longer take such toy ling paines ;

For here ’s the spring (saith he) whence pleasures flow
And brings them damnable excessive gaines :

That now are cedars growne from shrubs and sprigs.

Since Greene’s Tu Quoque and those Garlicke Jigs.

Mediaeval Stage, ii. 194, 214. For Elizabethan school-plays at Shrews-
bury, cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Ashton. Murray, ii. 204. 216, 243. 324, 364, 382,
records plays by schoolboys or other children at Bath (1602), Bristol
(1594), Coventry (1601-2), Ludlow (1562, IS 75 “^). Norwich (1564-5),
Plymouth (Totnes boys, 1564-74).

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

379

Eton, Westminster, and Merchant Taylors and the song
schools of the Chapel Royal, Windsor, St. Paul’s and the
private chapel of the Earl of Oxford continued, far into
Elizabeth’s reign, to give their performances at Court side by
side with the growing companies of noble and royal servants.
It was not until the professionals called upon the university
wits and began to mingle literary with popular elements in
their productions that the destinies of the drama passed
definitely into their hands. The earlier boy companies died
out soon after 1590. A decade later the Paul’s and Chapel
companies were revived, the latter at least under somewhat
new economic conditions. Formerly the plays had been
managed by schoolmasters and song-masters, as by-activities
of institutions primarily established for other objects. For
the revived Paul’s plays, so far as we know, Edward Pearce,
the choirmaster, was similarly responsible. The Chapel
children, on the other hand, were placed upon a more regular
business footing. The official Master of the Children, Nathaniel
Giles, took part in the undertaking ; and the royal commis-
sion to impress singing boys, which he held, was unscru-
pulously used to compel the services of boys who could not
sing, and were only needed as recruits for the stage. But
long before James had come to the decision that on religious
grounds the connexion between the Chapel and the plays
must be broken, the actual control of the organization had
passed from the Master to a financial syndicate, associated
much on the principle adopted by the ordinary playing
companies, whose members hired a theatre, charged them-
selves with the maintenance of the boys and of the per-
formances, and divided up the profits as their reward. During
the history of the Chapel boys and of the group of Revels
companies which succeeded them, several of these syndicates
came into existence, and shares in one or other of them were
held by Marston, Drayton, Barry, Mason, Daborne, and very
possibly also by other dramatists. The articles of association
of the King’s Revels company in 1608 may perhaps be taken
as typical. One of the sharers, Martin Slater the actor, who
was evidently a kind of manager, is to have lodgings in the
theatre, which was the Whitefriars, and the right to sell
refreshments, and is to travel with the children if necessary,
in which event he is to enjoy a share and a half in the profits.
The children are to be apprenticed to him for three years
each, and he is to bind himself in l^o not to transfer the
indentures. The ‘ whole chardges of the howse, the gatherers,
the wages, the childrens bourd, musique, booke keeper,
tyreman, tyrewoman, lights, the Maister of the revells duties,

380 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

and all other things needefull and necessary ’ are to be
deducted in due proportions from each day’s takings, so that
the company may not run into debt. No sharer is to take
away any apparel or other common property, or print any
play-book, on pain of losing his interest.

The boys played in what were called * private ’ houses,
and it is not quite clear how far they were amenable to the
usual principles of stage regulation ; an order by the Privy
Council to the Lord Mayor to suppress plays during the
Lent of i6oi was obviously intended to be enforced against
them. Their performances, especially while they were novel,
proved a serious menace to the prosperity of the adult com-
panies. The classical allusions on the subject are that of
Jonson in The Poetaster to the winter of 1600-1, which made
the players poorer than so many starved snakes,^ and the
elaborate apology for the travelling of the company in Hamlet,
which is so germane to the matter now under discussion that
it must, however familiar, be given in full : ^

Hamlet. . . . What players are they ?

Rosin. Euen those you were wont to take delight in the Tragedians
of the City.

Ham. How chances it they trauaile ? their residence both in
reputation and profit was better both wayes.

Rosin. I thinke their Inhibition comes by the meanes of the late
Innouation ?

Ham. Doe they hold the same estimation they did when I was in
the Qty ? Are they so follow’d ?

Rosin. No indeed, they are not.

Ham. How comes it ? doe they grow rusty ?

Rosin. Nay, their indeauour keepes in the wonted pace ; But there
is Sir an ayrie of Children, little Yases, that crye out on the top of
question ; and are most tyrannically clap’t for ’t : these are now the
fashion, and so be-ratled the common Stages (so they call them) that

* Poetaster, iii. iv. 344, ' O, it will get vs a huge deale of money, Captaine,
and wee haue need on ’t ; for this winter ha 's made vs all poorer, then
so many staru’d snakes : No bodie comes at vs ; not a gentleman, nor
a

2 Hamlet, ii. ii. 339. This is the Folio text. The Second Quarto omits
all but the first ten lines, but that there was some reference to the children
in the original version of the play, the date of which may be 1601, is shown
by the First Quarto text :

Hamlet. How comes it that they trauell ? Do they grow restie ?

GUderstone. No my lord, their reputation holds as it was wont.

Hamlet, How then ?

Gilderstone, Yfaith my Lord, noueltie carries it away.

For the principall publike audience that
Came to them, are turned to private playes.

And to the humour of children.

THE ACTOR^S ECONOMICS 381

many wearing Rapiers^ are affraide of Goose-quils^ and dare scarse
come thither.

Ham. What are they Children ? Who maintains ’em ? How are *
they escoted ? Will they pursue the Quality no longer then they
can sing ? Will they not say afterwards if they should grow them-
selues to common Players (as it is like most if their meanes are no
better) their Writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against
their owne Succession.

Rosin. Faith there ha ’s bene much to do on both sides : and the
Nation holds it no sinne, to tarre them to Controuersie. There was
for a while, no mony bid for argument, vnlesse the Poet and the
Player went to Cuffes in the Question.

Ham. Is ’t possible ?

Guild. Oh there ha ’s beene much throwing about of Braines.

Ham. Do the Boyes carry it away ?

Rosin. I that they do my Lord, Hercules & his load too.

The be-rattling of the common stages and their spirited
replies, thought by some to include a ‘ purge ’ in Troilus and
Cressida^ with which Shakespeare ‘ put down ’ Ben Jonson,
form an element in the literary conflict known as ‘ the war of
the theatres \ in which, however, this issue is much complicated
with others arising from the personalities of the dramatists
engaged, and notably from that of Ben Jonson himself.'

' The main interest of the * war of the theatres or ‘ Poetomachia ' as
Dekker, Satiromastix , Epist. lo, calls it, is for literature and biography,
rather than for stage-history, I refer to it under the plays concerned in
chh. xxiii, xxiv, and can only add a brief summary here. The treatment
of R. A. Small, The Stage Quarrel (1899), is excellent, and may be supple-
mented by H. C. Hart's papers, Gabriel Harvey, Marston and Ben Jonson
(9 N. Q. xi. 201, 281, 343, 501 ; xii. 161, 263, 342, 403, 482) and On Carlo
Buffone {jo N. Q. i. 381), while the less critical view, partly derived from
Fleay, of J, H. Penniman, The War of the Theatres (1897), is revised in
his ^ition of Poetaster and Satiromastix. The protagonists are Jonson
and Marston, with whom became allied Dekker. Daniel and many others,
whose names have been brought under discussion, do not seem to have
been really concerned. Jonson himself tells us, in the Apologetical Dia-
logue, probably written late in 1601, to Poetaster that * three yeeres. They
did provoke me with their petulant stiles On every stage *. This takes
us to 1599* up to which year there is no just ground for suggesting any
conflict between Jonson and Marston. Jonson may then have taken
offence at Marston's portrait of him, intended to be complimentary, as
Chrisoganus in Histriomastix. In the same year he criticized Marston's
style in E. M. O. In 1600 Marston satirized Jonson as Brabant Senior
in Jack Drum's Entertainment, and in 1601 as Lampatho Doria in What
You Will. Jonson in turn brought Marston into Poetaster (1601) as
Crispinus, and added Dekker as Demetrius. Dekker retorted a month
or two later with his caricature of Jonson as Horace in Satiromastix.
Some unascertained part in the ' purge ' given to Jonson is ascribed in
3 Parnassus (1601) to Shakespeare. Jonson and Marston seem to have
been reconciled by 1603 but the dispute had not been merely a paper
one, for Jonson, Conversations, ii, 20, claims that he * beat Marston, and
took his pistol from him *.

382 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

Thus is explained the apparent paradox by which plays as
well as pamphlets become the vehicle of attacks upon players.
Three such plays, Histriomastix, The Poetaster^ and the
second part of The Return from Parnassus^ call for special
attention. The player-scenes in Hisiriomasiix seem to
belong mainly, though not wholly, to the original form of the
play, which I regard as an outcome of the campaign of
Robert Greene and his fellows about 1590, although the
extant text, not printed until 1610, represents a later recen-
sion, probably undertaken by Marston, as one of the ‘ musty
fopperies of antiquity ’ produced by the Paul’s boys about
1600.1 The piece is of the nature of a political morality, and
the scenes in question serve as one illustration of its general
theme, which is that of the cyclical rotation of society through
the successive stages of Peace, Plenty, Pride, Envy, War,
Poverty, and so to Peace again. Many side-lights are thrown
upon the methods of company organization which have
already been described in these pages. In Act I some idle
and drunken artisans. Gulch, Clout, Belch the beard-maker,
Gut the fiddle-string-makcr, Incle the pedlar, combine to
form a company. Their poet is Master Posthaste, whom they
call a gentleman scholar, but who is evidently a caricature
of Anthony Munday, dramatist and Messenger of the Chamber.
A scrivener is called in to ‘ tye a knott of knaves togither ’,
and Bougie the mercer will furnish them with ‘ rich stuff ’
at a price. They call themselves Sir Oliver Owlet’s men,
and take his badge of an owl in an ivy-bush. In Act II they
appear on the steps of a market cross and ‘ cry ’ a play to be
given in the town-house at three o’clock. Their repertory
includes The Lascivious Knight^ Lady Nature^ Mother Gurton's
Needle (a tragedy). The Devil and Dives (a comedy), A Russet
Coat and a Knight's Cap (an infernal), A Proud Heart and
a Beggar's Purse (a pastoral). The Widow's Apron Strings
(a nocturnal). 2 Posthaste is also working on * the new plot
of the Prodigall Childe ’, with a prologue ‘ for lords ’ and an
epilogue. They are invited to play before Lord Mavortius,

» Small, 67, has an excellent analysis of Histriomasiix. He dates it in
1596, but not convincingly. It might just as well be 1588-90. The text
is in R. Simpson, The School of Shakespeare, ii. i, and needs re-editing.
Moreover, Simpson thought that Posthaste was Shakespeare. The actor-
scenes are i. 112-62 ; ii. 70-147, 188-344 ; ni. 179-243, 265-78 ; iv. 159-
201 ; V. 61-102, 238-43 ; vi. 187-240. Of these I think that ii. 247-80 ;
iii. 1 79-2 1 7, 265-78 may belong to the Marstonian revision.

* Cf. Hamlet, ii. ii. 415,' The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, histoiy, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-
historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem
unlimited *.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 383

and thereupon throw over ‘ the town play *, and attend
him, singing :

Some up and some down, there ’s players in the town :

You wot well who they bee.

The sum doth arise to three companies :

One, two, three, foure, make we.

Besides we that travel, with pumps full of gravell.

Made all of such running leather,

That once in a week, new masters we seeke.

And never can hold together.

The actual performance, perhaps owing to a Marstonian inter-
polation, consists of a fragment of The Prodigal Child, together
with a fragment of a piece on Troilus and Cressida, At the
end Posthaste extemporizes on a ‘ theame ’ and the com-
pany are rewarded with ss, 4^. In Act III a Marstonian
passage introduces them to a new poet Chrisoganns, who asks
ten pounds a play. But ‘ our companie ’s hard of hearing
of that side and they will be content with their * goose-
quillian Posthast Chrisoganus rates their pride and the
* windy froth of bottle-ale ’ which passes muster for poetry
on the stage. The ‘ proud statute rogues ’ also refuse an offer
from Mavortius of 13^. 4^. or even £1 6s. 8d. for another
performance, and in view of their ‘ expense in sumptuous
clothes * they must have ‘ ten pound a play, or no point
comedy ’. Their insolence is condemned :

How soone can they remember to forget
Their undeserved fortunes and esteeme.

Blush not the peasants at their pedigree,

Suckt pale with lust ? What bladders swolne with pride.

To strout in shreds of nitty brogetie !

In Act IV they are rehearsing, and fine Posthaste is. for
coming late. And they quarrel amongst themselves. Clout
is discontented with his half-share, and will have ‘ a whole
share, or turn camelion ’. Acts V and VI bring Nemesis.
As they set up their bills, they are pressed for the wars. There
is no remedy. They have alienated the town officers by
refusing the town’s reward. The ‘ master-sharers * must even
provide their equipment out of their own purses. The soldiers
loot their apparel. They will be the sharers now, and the
players the hired men. They bid one who ‘ would rend and
tear a cat upon a stage * not to ‘ march like a drowned
rat ’, but * look up and play the Tamburlaine ’. The hostess
claims her shot, ‘ The sharers dinners sixpence a piece. The

hirelings pence ’ ; and the hamper has to be searched

for a cloak to pawn. The constable demands his dues for

384 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

tax-money to relieve the poor, and the excuse that but fifteen
pence was shared last week is not accepted in face of the idle
and immoral lives that the rascals have led. In the end they
are shipped off remorselessly to serve beyond the seas. It
will be obvious that, while most of the points of criticism
taken by the dramatist are those familiar to the literary
pamphleteers, he is also not unsympathetic to the Puritan
view of players as a canker in the state,

Jonson wrote his Poetaster in the spring of i6oi. He had
already heard of the intention of the Chamberlain’s men against
him, which afterwards took shape in Dekker and Marston’s
SaHromastix^ and got in the first blows by depicting his
assailants as * a sort of copper-lac* t scoundrels ’ in ancient
Rome and their poets as Demetrius ‘ a dresser of plaies about
the town here * and Crispinus ‘ poetaster and plagiary ’.
Some of his matter has its reminiscences of Histriomastix ;
some probably rests on details with regard to individual
Chamberlain’s men which are now irrecoverable.^ His allu-
sions to their poor winter season of 1600-1 and to the accumu-
lation of shares by leading actors have already been quoted.
The chief scene devoted to the players is that in which Histrio
is bullied by Tucca, the huffing captain, who calls him
‘ stalker ’, ‘ gulch *, * stiffe toe ’, * twopenny teare-mouth ’,
and * penny-biter ’, bids him turn fiddler again, get a bass
violin at his back and march in a tawny coat with one sleeve
to Goose Fair, and accuses his company of being usurers and
brokers, who prey upon younger sons and citizens, and furnish
facilities at their house for immoral practices. Tucca would
bring his * cockatrice * to see a bawdy play, but the players
have nothing but humours, revels, and satires ; to which
Histrio replies that he is confusing them with * the other side
of Tyber *, for * we haue as much ribaldries in our plaies,
as can bee, as you would wish, Captaine : all the sinners,
i’ the suburbs, come, and applaud our action, daily’. Crispinus
is introduced as one who will teach the actors to tear and rant.
Tucca bids Histrio give him forty shillings in earnest, since
‘ if hee pen for thee once, thou shalt not need to trauell,
with thy pumps full of grauell, any more, after a blinde iade
and a hamper : and stalke vpon boords, and barrell heads,
to an old crackt trumpet’. Yet inasmuch as some of the
players are ‘ honest gent’men-like scoundrels, and suspected
to ha’ some wit ’, Histrio may make Tucca a supper, and
bring Frisker ‘ my zany ’ and Mango ‘ your fat fool ’, so
long as he does not laugh too much or beg rapiers or scarfs ;

» PoetasUv, m. iv ; iv. iv ; v. iii. ioS-38.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS 385

but by no means * your eating plaier * Polyphagus, nor ‘ the
villanous-out-of-tune fiddler * Aenobarbus, nor Aesop, ‘ your ^
politician Later in the play Histrio and Aesop inform
against Ovid and Horace, who is Jonson, to the government,
and although Tucca promises Aesop ‘ a monopoly of playing,
confirm’d to thee and thy couey, vnder the Empirours broad
Seale, for this seruice ’, his actual reward is to be whipped.^
In the Apologetical Dialogue printed with the play Jonson
admits his hostility to the players :

Now for the Players, it is true, I tax'd 'hem,

And yet, but some ; and those so sparingly,

As all the rest might haue sate still, vnquestion’d,

Had they but had the wit, or conscience,

To thinke well of themselues. But, impotent they
Thought each man's vice belong'd to their whole tribe :

And much good doo 't 'hem. What th’ haue done 'gainst me,

I am not mou'd with. If it gaue 'hem meat.

Or got 'hem clothes, 'tis well. That was their end.

Onely amongst them, I am sorry for
Some better natures, by the rest so drawne.

To run in that vile line.

The Return from Parnassus is of less significance, as being
a Cambridge, not a London, play, and merely an echo of the
main controversy. It was acted during the Christmas of
1601-2, and is a satire of things in general from the university
point of view. Amongst other topics the relations of scholar-
ship to the stage are touched upon. Burbadge and Kempe
come in, boasting of their victoiy over Ben Jonson, and
trying to recruit poets into their service.* The scholars
resent such thraldom :

And must the basest trade yeeld vs reliefe ?

Must we be practis'd to those leaden spouts,

That nought doe vent but what they do receiue.

And in the end they decide rather to take the road as fiddlers :

Better it is mongst fidlers to be chiefe.

Then at a plaiers trencher beg reliefe.

But ist not strange these mimick apes should prize
Vnhappy schollers at a hireling rate.

Vile world, that lifts them vp to hye degree.

And treades vs downe in groueling misery.

England affordes those glorious vagabonds,

That carried earst their fardels on their backes,

» Can the Aesop episode be a reminiscence of the part played by
Augustine Phillips in the Essex innovation ? Cf. vol. ii, p. 205.

* 2 Return from Parnassus, i v. 3 ; v. i .

2229*1 C C

386 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

Coursers to ride on through the gazing streetes,

Sooping it in their glaring satten sutes^

And pages to attend their maisterships ;

With mouthing words that better wits haue framed.

They purchase lands, and now esquiers are namde.

It is the old burden of Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe
once more.^

The disturbance of theatrical conditions due to the revival
of the boy companies became in time less acute. No doubt,
the novelty of their performances wore off. Moreover, the
companies were not very successful in holding together,
partly because of the indiscretions of their managers and
the inadequacy of their finance to stand the strain of plague
years, but more because the boys, as might perhaps have
been expected, grew up and ceased to be boys. Already about
1608 the Blackfriars boys ‘ were masters themselves * of their
own company, and when this arrangement broke down, they
began to be drafted into the adult associations. Other boy
companies followed, but these were subject to the same
difficulties, and the vogue of the original ‘ little eyases ’
was never quite recaptured. ^ But, after all, the competition
had not disappeared, but had merely taken another form.
The younger generation was knocking at the gates ; Field
and Taylor waiting in eager rivalry for Burbadge’s shoes, and
meanwhile forming new combinations of their own which,
however unstable, at least cut at the profits of their more
firmly established rivals. The ‘ monopoly ’ offered by Jonson
in jest would no doubt have been welcomed by the principal
companies in earnest. The policy of the Privy Council from
1597 to iboo pointed in this direction, but for whatever
reason was not brought into effective operation. There
are several indications of the pressure of competition during
the earlier part of the seventeenth century. In 1609 it was
worth the while of the Queen’s Revels and the King’s men to
unite in buying off the Paul’s boys at the cost of £20 a year.
Dekker in the same year prophesies that the contention of
the two houses of York and Lancaster will be as nothing to
that of the three houses, by which he means the Globe, the

' In certain other plays which have actors amongst their dramatis
personae (e.g. Midsummer-Night's Dream and Middleton's Mayor of Queen-
borough) the point is reversed, and it is the regular companies who satirize
provincial companies or amateurs.

* Thus in 1618 the Mayor of Exeter complained of a company travelling
under Daniel's patent for the Children of Bristol (q.v.) that, though the
patent was for children, the company consisted of men, with only five
youths amongst them.

THE ACTOR’S ECONOMICS

387

Fortune, and the Red Bull.^ Finally, in 1610, the preacher
William Crashaw, commenting upon the hostility shown by
the players to the plantation of Virginia, declares explicitly'
that it was motived by the fact that they were so multiplied
in England that one could not live by another, and by the
refusal of the promoters of the colony to give any of them
a chance of trying their fortunes in the new world. ^

The palmy days of playing lasted beyond the formal limits
set to this investigation. But they did not last for ever.
The coming of the end can here only be adumbrated. It
perhaps shows itself first in an increasing unwillingness
amongst the provincial corporations to hear the players.
It was in 1623, the year of the publication of the First Folio,
that the City of Norwich took the step of making a representa-
tion to the Privy Council and obtaining leave not to suffer
any players within their liberties. It is true that the inhibi-
tion was not strictly carried out and that the authority was
renewed in 1640. Nevertheless it is a sign of the times.
Other cities, Chester in 1615, Southampton in 1623, Worcester
in 1627, closed their public buildings to performances.^
From this time onwards the entries of payments to players
in municipal accounts tend more and more to take the form
of ‘ gratuities * given them ‘ because they should not play *
or ‘ to dismiss them or ‘ to put them off or in more
emphatic terms still ‘ to rid the town of them Meanwhile

the Puritan controversy breaks out again, winding up to
that alarming compilation of learning and argument in
Prynne’s Histriomastix of 1633, which indeed cost its author
his ears, but must none the less have hung like a shadow of
fate upon the doomed stage for ever after. And in 1642 the
shadow moved, and on the outbreak of war came that
dignified ordinance of 2 September, which waved frivolity
aside, what time the nation girded itself for matters of
moment

An Order of the Lords and Commons concerning Stage-play es.

Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped in her own Blood,
and the distracted Estate of England, threatned with a Cloud of
Blood, by a Civill Warre, call for all possible meanes to appease and

^ Cf. ch. xii, introduction. * Cf. App. C, No. Iviii.

^ Murray, ii. 235, 400, 410.

4 Ibid. 199, 231, 264, 312, 341, 384, &c.

® The Order was appended to A Declaration of the Lords and Commons
Assembled in Parliament, For the appeasing and quietting of all unlawfull
Tumults and Insurrections in the severall Counties of England, and Dominion
of Wales (1642). The whole pamphlet is facsimiled m J. Knight’s edition
of J. Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (1886).

388 THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

avert the Wrath of God appearing in these Judgements ; amongst
which, Fasting and Prayer having bm often tryed to be very effectuall ;
' have bin lately, and are still enjo3med ; and whereas publike Sports
doe not well agree with publike Calamities, nor publike Stage-playes
\/ith the Seasons of Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious
solemnity, and the other being Spectacles of pleasure, too commonly
expressing laciuious Mirth and Levitie : It is therefore thought fit,
and Ordeined by the Lords and Commons in this Parliament Assembled,
that while these sad Causes and set times of Humiliation doe continue,
publike Stage-Playes shall cease, and bee forborne. Instead of which,
are recommended to the people of this Land, the profitable and
seasonable Considerations of Repentance, Reconciliation, and peace
with God, which probably may produce outward peace and prosperity,
and bring againe Times of Joy and Gladnesse to these Nations.

Die Veneris Septemb. 2. 1642.

I need not here attempt to trace the faint flutterings of the
mimetic instinct which survived this ordinance and even
that, final and more detailed, of 9 February 1648, * for the
utter suppression and abolishing of all stage-playes and inter-
ludes *, whereby players were made amenable to the statutes
against vagabonds ‘ notwithstanding any license whatsoever
from the King or any person or persons to that purpose*,
and the justices were ordered to demolish the houses, and to
subject the players, if found, to a whipping.^ It is sufficient
that from 1642 to 1660 there was substantially no public
stage in London. Some of the King’s mer^, we are told, went
into the army, ‘ and, like good men and true, served the King
their master, though in a different, yet more honourable
capacity *. Under the Commonwealth they were ‘ reduced
to a necessitous condition and we have one glimpse of
the last of Shakespeare’s fellows, John Lowin, keeping an
inn, the Three Pigeons, at Brentford, where he died very old,
‘ and his poverty was as great as his age

‘ Hazlitt, E, D, 5 . 65. * Wright, Historia Histrionica, 409, 41 1.

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